Verduyn Gallery is pleased to present to you the group exhibition Touch, showcasing the works of Jana Cordenier (BE), Hannah De Corte (BE), Joke Hansen (BE), Lucie Lanzini (FR), Léo Luccioni (FR), and Joke Raes (BE).

Of all our primary senses, touch is arguably one of the more intriguing senses. Perceiving reality by the manner of touch connects the material world with the subject — or subject to subject. A touch always consists of a metaphysical presence. Neuroscience has revealed the overlapping, interrelational function of our human senses, strongly tied to mental-emotional responses. Think of the touch of the artist, who is able to make something invisible almost tangible — or at least sensible.

Tactility in art, in fact, has a longstanding tradition. However, in today’s day and age, in which the digital world seems to rob us of our senses, one may experience a revival of the tactile — or at least the importance of the tactile. We reexperience this inherently human urge for sensitive qualities. Think of texture, hardness, softness, the touch of the artist, or the subtleties of organic matter. PS: But please note, despite the title of the show, please do not touch the art.

Jana Cordenier (born in 1989 in Poperinge, Belgium, resides and works in Ghent, Belgium) revisits the medium of painting in an utmost intimate way. For the past few years, Cordenier has been on a quest to soften the heavy touch of the paintbrush and the inadmissibility of its surface to attain elusive moving atmospheres. Influenced by her surroundings and structures of nature, intuitively, Jana Cordenier is known for her luminous works, stretching transparent and soft surfaces populated by bright colours and intriguing textures.

Hannah De Corte (born in 1988 in Elsene, Belgium, resides and works in Oxford, England, and Brussels, Belgium) incorporates various elements into her painterly practice. Think of threads, folds, stitching, woven patterns, dots, and pictorial planes. Due to the time-consuming process of manipulating material in an interplay of hiding and revealing, constructing and deconstructing, a durational element comes to the fore. Decorte — who completed her Ph.D. research in 2019 on the subject of the raw and unprimed canvas as an aesthetic and iconological intermediary — intertwines the surface of her works with the composition, aesthetics, and structure of the painting.

Joke Hansen (born in 1979 in Bilzen, Belgium, resides and works in Hasselt, Belgium) challenges the physical boundaries of painting. She trades in the traditionally shaped rectangular surface for an infinite array of forms and shapes. How does the shaped canvas react to the paint and brushstrokes? Or is the form of the surface dictating the gestures of the artist? With Joke Hansen, on the verge of both comfort and discomfort, a formal exchange of impulses emerges, which always seems to arrive at an open ending.

Lucie Lanzini (born in 1986 in Belfort, France, resides and works in Brussels, Belgium) is a contemporary sculptor who is best known for cultivating an extraordinary sensibility toward memory. By using molds to capture specific forms in jesmonite, metal, glass, or polyurethane foam, the artist aims to distort our reality and existence. With Lanzini, the artist seems to become an alchemist once more, shifting forms from one matter to another.

Léo Luccioni (born in 1994 in Foix, France, resides and works in Brussels, Belgium) is a multidisciplinary artist occupied with our ambiguous relationship with consumerism in a neoliberal era. Encompassing installation, sculpture, printmaking, and drawing, Luccioni’s neo-conceptual artistic practice takes capitalistic phenomena to the field of art, questioning their absurdity under a veil of humour and anti-poetry.

Joke Raes (born in 1983 in Bruges, Belgium, resides and works in Ghent, Belgium) draws, lasers, knits, moulds, assembles, and sculpts botanical and fantastic forms with an exuberant amount of detail. With an almost obsessive interest in the surface of her works, Raes blends nature with culture with her works being the result of an intriguing exchange or cross-pollination. However, simultaneously, this story of efflorescence and a complex symbiosis is also a story of decay, resistance, or stagnation. A visual and material spectacle, with an ambiguous undercurrent.

Verduyn Gallery is pleased to welcome you from October 2 until November 6, 2022, on Saturday and Sunday from 14:00 to 18:00, or by appointment.