Figures Frozen In Time: 25 Sculptures By Hans Op De Beeck

We reached out to Hans Op de Beeck to learn more about his creative process and his background. Reflecting on the start of his artistic journey, he shared that as a teenager, he was deeply interested in comic books and graphic novels. "My fascination today as a visual artist for figurative, pictorial art forms and narration for sure derives from that background, even though as a spectator I can, say, as much appreciate full-blown abstract minimalism or highly conceptual art forms. 

As a late teen, I somewhat started to realize the arts would be my domain to explore, my future mental and emotional home to inhabit; aside from drawing, I studied acting, playing the violin, and the guitar… and I always had a love for language and creative writing.

When I got my Master’s degree in visual arts, I still was a bit doubtful whether I could become a professional artist, but at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, a kind of postgraduate artist program of two years, I gained the needed confidence through the support and appreciation I was honored to receive from admirable artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto, who believed in my creative journey and talent."

Many of Op de Beeck's sculptures are crafted in a monochromatic grayscale palette, so we were curious about what inspired this aesthetic choice and how the artist believes it influences the way audiences interpret his work. "The part of my work that I executed in monochromic grey has gotten the biggest exposure, so it is more known than works I executed in different tones," he shared. "I did make quite some full-color sculptures or sculptures in combinations of two or three colors, and most of my video works and scenography for theatre and opera are in full color…

But at some point, in my production, I discovered my own kind of grey, that makes sculptured objects, interiors or landscapes appear as if they are fossilized, made of stone or pigmented plaster. This petrified aspect makes one think of Pompeii: life frozen in time, as it were. I discovered that the grey coating (I almost coincidentally invented a technique of layering many thin coatings onto the sculpture) has an almost velvet-like appearance that reflects the light very tenderly. In my view, it gives a special aura to the depicted, a soft skin that abstracts the figurative forms into a kind of parallel, silent world. The absence of color puts the focus on the light. Throughout my work, light and how it reflects and animates, is of extreme importance, since it totally defines and articulates the mood of an image, regardless of the medium."

"My work is never about simulation of reality as it is, not about literal mimesis or imitation, but about evoking a mood, interpreting, and abstracting the world to touch the essence underneath the skin of reality. I want to evoke a mood, a form of visual, sensorial fiction that the viewer can identify with and experience before understanding it. My works in monochrome velvet grey, in black and white, or, say, in light blue and soft green, are silent, concentrated variants of what we know. That is why I do not work with ready-made: my sculptures and installations, which are often hundreds of square meters in size, are made by hand, because of the power of interpretation."

Hans Op de Beeck shared that his inspiration comes from small, seemingly unspectacular actions or moments: his daughter falling asleep with her head on his lap on the sofa, the baker down the street carefully arranging his colorful cakes in the shop window, a gardener calmly blowing leaves off the walkway, and a trembling elderly woman patiently helping a special-needs child in a playground—slow, as if underwater. 

"These seemingly insignificant moments contain the true essence of life, in my view. They speak about the human condition in a subtle way and reflect the bigger picture. But it could as well be objects or places from daily life that inspire me: a half-eaten collapsed birthday cake from the day before, an abandoned amusement park… rest objects that speak about what once was, what is, or what might be, about how we tragicomically stage our lives and routines." 

"I have always avoided making big statements about life, let alone trying to say in a patronizing way how life works. I have no wisdom to offer, but try to reflect on life with the viewer and share the same questions and wonders with him. 

I view life as a tragicomic phenomenon, and I think it is important to show both the ridiculous and the serious, the pleasant and the difficult, the vibrant life and the stagnation of life, and the enjoyment, and the suffering. Life is never one-dimensional.

I also love moments when we let go of control, moments when we let go of ourselves, and our identity and surrender to the unknown, the intoxication, the sleep, and the subconscious. There is so much elusiveness, darkness, and mysteriousness that falls outside the linguistic understanding of the world, outside logic, and intellectual legitimacy, and I think that art is one of those means to touch upon those notions."

According to the artist, conceiving an idea is always simple; the hardest part is bringing it to life. "Obviously, not every production runs smoothly," he added. "The core idea for a work of art can be very simple and a work of art can only come to life for the viewer when the physical realization is adequate and perfectly in balance with the content of the work.

Even completely banal objects, such as the bottles on a tabletop, become great art when painted with the right poetic sensitivity and artistic precision, as Giorgio Morandi so wonderfully illustrates. In his work, apparent meaningless objects then become real, essential content.

"I have often made sculptures, painted watercolors, or written texts in which the e*******n failed and which I had to throw away, often even after a lot of hard and intense work. You must make mistakes to learn and always continue to evaluate and re-evaluate with the utmost self-criticism, and never compromise your own standard, because sooner or later you will regret it. Great dedication and the constant critical assessment of every step in the realization process are what help to keep your artistic output up to standard."

"For the Lyon Biennale two and a half years ago, I created an installation of 1900 square meters, for my solo exhibition at the Amos Rex Museum in Helsinki, I created an immersive total experience of 2000 square meters... These are often projects that require, say, ten large trucks to move the whole thing. So, there is indeed a lot of organization and logistics involved. Fortunately, I have a small team and a great studio manager who takes care of all those practical needs for me. My team and I can literally spend months creating such large installations. And usually, my small team and I work in parallel on several exhibitions and installations at the same time, as I realize about thirty exhibitions per year. 

For example, at night I paint large watercolors, and during the day we work on new sculptures in my studio, while we are working on a monumental installation at an external location with several additional workers as well, and, for example, on top of that I might have started to write a new play. So, there are quite some periods of very little sleep, as you can imagine."

"For every large new installation, my compact team and I face new challenges. Like when we made my life-size carousel: it was shown outdoors for the first time and therefore had to withstand wind and weather. Then you must do a lot of research to understand how it should be built. Or, for example, we made a large cliff, a massive concrete sculpture of a gigantic rock formation; a kind of difficult puzzle of very heavy parts that had to remain transportable. Or I made a cinematographic film with photorealistic sets realized on computer (CGI) and studio recordings at Green Key studios, with which I had no experience at all, or, for example, a film with 800 extras, for which I had exactly one shooting day to film everything. But these kinds of technical and organizational challenges always ensure that the adrenaline flows and that is enormously stimulating."