Philip Metten
Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp Borgerhout
Antwerp | BelgiumPhilip Metten presents his second solo exhibition at Zeno X Gallery.
The exhibition offers an overview of the works Metten created in recent years and gives an insight into the different stages he went through. He experimented with different materials and media, ranging from paper collages to wall sculptures in papier-mâché and paintings.
In the first space, an aluminium profile acts both as a zero point and as a thread that connects the various works. This scenographic intervention is characteristic of Philip Metten’s work method: he often sets out a certain system, creating more room for interpretation in the process. In 2015, for instance, he designed a sculpture that could also be used freely as the scenography for a group exhibition at Extra City Kunsthal. Aluminium is ubiquitous in Metten’s architectural practice: the material plays a prominent role in the interior of the ESSEN restaurant in Borgerhout and also recurs as the ‘skeleton’ of his mobile CINEMA. Aluminium is often employed to demarcate a space or to create a spatial drawing. The intervention in the gallery is concise but impactful. The aluminium profile serves as a plinth and emphasizes the sculptural rather than the pictorial qualities of the collages and paintings.
The paintings are visually related to Metten’s paper collages and are constructed in a similar way. Instead of shreds of paper, Metten cuts up painted pieces of linen canvas which he then stitches together layer by layer, like a city expanding from a core. The superposition of layers turn the paintings simultaneously into reliefs. What stands out in these paintings is the fact that Metten stays true to the use of colour in his works on paper. The pastel colours refer to the millimetre paper used to make technical drawings, of which the artist has amassed a large collection. In some paintings, Metten evokes the stitched seams by scratching the canvas with a needle and filling in the grooves with paint.
Philip Metten presents his second solo exhibition at Zeno X Gallery.
The exhibition offers an overview of the works Metten created in recent years and gives an insight into the different stages he went through. He experimented with different materials and media, ranging from paper collages to wall sculptures in papier-mâché and paintings.
In the first space, an aluminium profile acts both as a zero point and as a thread that connects the various works. This scenographic intervention is characteristic of Philip Metten’s work method: he often sets out a certain system, creating more room for interpretation in the process. In 2015, for instance, he designed a sculpture that could also be used freely as the scenography for a group exhibition at Extra City Kunsthal. Aluminium is ubiquitous in Metten’s architectural practice: the material plays a prominent role in the interior of the ESSEN restaurant in Borgerhout and also recurs as the ‘skeleton’ of his mobile CINEMA. Aluminium is often employed to demarcate a space or to create a spatial drawing. The intervention in the gallery is concise but impactful. The aluminium profile serves as a plinth and emphasizes the sculptural rather than the pictorial qualities of the collages and paintings.
The paintings are visually related to Metten’s paper collages and are constructed in a similar way. Instead of shreds of paper, Metten cuts up painted pieces of linen canvas which he then stitches together layer by layer, like a city expanding from a core. The superposition of layers turn the paintings simultaneously into reliefs. What stands out in these paintings is the fact that Metten stays true to the use of colour in his works on paper. The pastel colours refer to the millimetre paper used to make technical drawings, of which the artist has amassed a large collection. In some paintings, Metten evokes the stitched seams by scratching the canvas with a needle and filling in the grooves with paint.
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