Sarah Smolders at M Leuven
Sarah Smolders, ‘A Space Begins, With Speaking’, through 1 September 2024, M Leuven, www.mleuven.be
Visitors to ‘A Space Begins, With Speaking’ are invited to quietly and diligently engage with the presentation at an intimate proximity, so as to discover connections between disparate elements until, little by little, the exhibition reveals itself to them, and the artist’s own gaze is conferred onto them.
Sarah Smolders’ (1988, Merksem) artistic practice is rooted in observations of minimal shifts in time and space, but it is also characterised by language in the broadest sense of the word, and by close-ups and facsimiles of materials — not to be confused with pastiche. Smolders is a devoted conceptual painter, who, at each stage of conception, not only ponders and deliberates, but works to apply the conceptualised ideas to the space that is available.
For previous exhibitions, the artist carried out site-specific interventions where she concentrated on the materiality of paint and on creating a cross-fertilisation of references: she is concerned with concepts such as inside and outside, visible and invisible, illusion, bifurcation and imitation. This is the first time that Smolders has incorporated ‘remnants’ of previous site-specific projects in a show. The top floor of M Leuven comprises a diptych of exhibition spaces, separated by an elongated roof terrace. Smolders has subjected the architectural features of these spaces to a series of highly specific and (seemingly) spartan manipulations.
Smolders, a patient reader of spatial forms, takes the time to allow a process of unification to unfold between herself and the site of an exhibition. It’s a crucial stage in her conceptualisation of a project. To prepare the space, she begins by doing away with extraneous elements, then considers to what extent the space could, or indeed should, be a blank canvas. Not infrequently, imperfections become the starting point for new ideas, interventions and work. In Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows (1933), the Japanese writer talks about (spatial) imperfections — what kinds of imperfections are acceptable and what kinds are absolutely not? 1 Throughout his musings on Japanese aesthetics, the author advocates for the appreciation of subtlety, imperfection and shadow in contrast with the Western pursuit of light and clarity. He talks about qualities such as gleam and shine. Parallels can be drawn between Smolders’ vision and Tanizaki’s ideas about impermanence, materiality, light, architecture and patina. (Day)light is an essential painterly (and sculptural) material, giving shape to ideas, and entirely indispensable to the viewer’s attempt at reading and forming an understanding of ‘A Space Begins, With Speaking’. For example, when natural light falls on the window-frame sculpture from the series ‘Notes of a house painter’ (2019/2024), it marks the gradual elapsing of the day, like a peculiar sundial.
The work in both exhibition spaces contains references to the minimalist movement that emerged in the 1960s. At first glance there are visual similarities to the work of Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin and the Boyle Family, but the subtle gestural language that Smolders presents here is of a different order. Minimalist architecture is generally more labour-intensive, requiring more planning and skill than the less minimal alternative; it implies a desire to hide everything away. There is a lot of thinking and craftsmanship involved in making elements disappear, in creating flow and visual continuity. In the ostensibly minimalist approach of ‘A Space Begins, With Speaking’, minimalism is only a point of reference, as the project is the result of weeks and months of labour and craft. Indeed, a wide-ranging technical repertoire was drawn upon in creating this exhibition, with Smolders erasing the distinction between studio floors, beams of light, marbled surfaces and museum spaces. Private and public landscapes become intertwined in a braid of delicate spatial sensations.
- 1 In Praise of Shadows was first published in Japanese in 1933, but it was not until 1977 that an English translation was published by Leete’s Island Books.
In the first space, the group of bronze sculptures With Speaking (2024) resembles frozen, crooked Fontana slashes, their size dictated by that of the window and door openings. Museum M’s architecture offers the reference point for almost all of Smolders’ interventions. In the second space, the strips of wallpaper — each sheet suspended from three metal eyelets — refer both to the exhibition space itself and to the Vanderkelenhuis, which is located within the museum. Smolders developed a series of bespoke tools in order to paint the ‘wallpaper’, including a stamp based on a negative of a Baroque motif found in the museum. The readability of this work depends once again on daylight, or at least on its reflection.
The various marbled elements in turn allude to M as well as to Smolders’ technical training. By specialising in decorative painting at the Institut Supérieur de Peinture Van Der Kelen-Logelain, she sought to expand her painterly vocabulary. One result of this are the wedges marbled in oil paint and sandwiched between pillars made from plastered canvas. The eight pillars with wedges constitute together the work Reading Rooms (2024), made especially for this space in M, which alludes to the architecture of classical antiquity and, through its imitation marble, also to neo-classicism.
Such wedge-like inclusions are a recurring element in both M spaces, as negative and positive sculptural forms. The wedge shape as a spatial element — as in the sculptural work of Joseph Beuys, for example — is a fundamental element in the construction and use of a building. It is ad-hoc, temporary, one of the simplest and yet most effective mechanical tools imaginable. Wedges exist in the space between; they symbolise support as well as division.
The works presented here can be read as translations, gestures, conceptual painterly interventions, linguistic signifiers on a spatial scale, trompe l’oeils, residues, and so on and so forth. We are talking about linguistic signifiers, symbols that become language without becoming part of spoken language — it’s not so much about the content of words but about the shape of writing, which in a certain sense is ‘legible’ to different gazes. In this way, Smolders’ work is remarkably inclusive. The gestures are not only gestures for their own sake, they are also translational movements that allow for a range of readings by an equally diverse audience. A brick prototype, framed in cardboard, is hung on the wall as the painting that it actually is, referring the visitor back to an intervention on the floor of the first space — mirrored on the other side of the roof terrace — that might not be noticed at first glance, or at least not until the inherent movement and the melodic sound of the painted bricks becomes very loud. With this apparently small link, Smolders extends a modest yet generous hand to the visitor, in an attempt to mediate the perception of her work. The direct experience and perception of the work remain central, which means that the painting on the floor may (must) be walked on. The interventions encourage another approach to viewing, to searching, to reflecting and seeing time pass through the changing light of the day.
Sarah Smolders gives the viewer her trust. This trust rests in the belief that not everything needs to be explained or spoon-fed, that audiences can be sensitive to a work without fully knowing or understanding what is going on. That, in itself, is a valuable experience.
At times exhibitions can be akin to a cake, consisting of a substantial body and a cherry on top. In the case of Smolders’ exhibition, the metaphor of the cake presents a challenge: ‘A Space Begins, With Speaking’ seems at first glance to be unadorned by crowning moments, without cherry. Yet on second (or first-and-a-half) viewing, there is more to see — the exhibition is in fact more cherry than cake. All its interventions are handmade, precise, detailed. It is cherry jam, if you like, in shades of marbled brown ochre, raw umber, off-white, bone white, speckled-grey earth and bronze. A multilingual, maximalist presentation encapsulated in minimalist forms.
Translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Beaton