REFLECTIE / REFLEXION / REFLECTION
Ensemble
Just like mirroring, ‘reflection’ needs a counterpart. Reflection arises from the friction of encounters and can only take place when there is openness to the outside world. Nevertheless, reflection without self-reflection is not credible either. Self-reflection, for example on the adopted point of view, the means or its own limits, is essential for achieving a complete understanding.
It has been twenty years since the Senate printed its reflective mark on Belgian legislation in the field of ethics and bioethics. Over the past three years, it has been studying and making recommendations on ‘cross-cutting’ issues with societal impact.
In the performance entitled Water te Water, Guy Mees (°1925-†2003) translates his homeopathic figurative language into an ecological and politico-environmental gesture. He lets a sphere of transparent plastic, filled with clear water, drift on the polluted Ghent-Terneuzen canal. The image seems to refer poetically to itself but in fact refers to the present world.
After analysing the components of a painting (pigment, support, format and frame), Marthe Wéry (°1930-†2005) designed a vast installation of sky blue panels. The ensemble is a sort of plastic partition, in the musical sense of the term, which must be reinterpreted in each exhibition place.
Carla Arocha (°1961, living in Antwerp) uses opaque Plexiglass plates to reflect their location. The projection screen shows a willingness to receiving and reflecting. It cuts the surrounding space, refers to it in its receptiveness and places it in another ‘light’.