Thunderclouds!

The text to the 'Thunderclouds'-exhibition (2007):

“Bosun!”, begins Peter Greenaway’s movie ’Prospero’s Books’. “Bosun!” With it, Prospero brings to life a storm as well as a ship, trapped in it. The old-fashioned bosun, responsible for the ship now needs to find a way to bring the passengers and crew safely to land.

Maarten Wydooghe paints the storm. In studying painting at St.-Lucas Brussels (Fik van Gestel) and St.-Lucas Ghent (Piet Moerman) a fascination grew for movement (resulting in video-expositions at Watou, Belgium) and short movies (Head On a Plate pictures) and the impact of a storm. Solidifying these in time and matter resulted in a series of thorough studies of paintings in oil (in itself a moving and changing medium) on canvas.

Despite the fact painting has been looked upon as old-fashiond, gallery Hartistic, in 2007, shows oil on canvas. The way the term bosun continues to reinvent itself on ever changing ships, oil on canvas survives changing times. The canvases which describe the air announce a world coming into being. A changing, organic world in-between that, because of the stucture (layer upon layer), posesses an underlying vitality. The paintings were selected for contests before (Gaverprijs, Stimulans) and won the people's award at Kiezen Voor Kunst West-Vlaanderen.

Trying to explain the storm in words can only be an attempt to do justice to word and image. This we can say, though: a storm brings itself into existence, announces itself and goes wherever it chooses. Exactly the way paint searches its own way on the canvas. For an instance, at its height, the storm encompasses all, it stills in mass, on the canvas it hardens in time. In the storm the wind whirls, on the canvas it is controlled by the strokes of the brush, or is the brush controlled by the wind inside of it? The stillness after the storm leaves the spectator with a washed-out emptiness. Then life gets going again under a grey sky. Whatever was there before does not matter anymore - it is gone.

Stefaan Goethals from gallery Hartistic previously had paintings, sculptures, photography and ceramics. From 14 january till 18 february canvases are back, the storm distilled in oil, not bound by frames. Now go look. Because however you look at it, the picture has the final word.