PETER DE MEYER "UPPERS AND DOWNERS"
"UPPERS AND DOWNERS"
OPENING Saturday 8th of November
2-9PM
« …
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
… »
— Allen Ginsberg, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992
The exhibition takes its title, “Uppers and Downers,” from two opposing substances — depressants and stimulants. Combining the two can be hazardous to one’s health. This use of contrasts forms a recurring thread throughout the exhibition. At the same time, the title suggests that the viewer is invited to make choices about the meanings they ascribe to the artworks. Decision-making is also an essential part of the artist’s practice, as he must continually choose between opposing emotions and interpretations.
Peter De Meyer is not an artist of grand gestures. Through subtle modifications, adjustments, and controlled transformations, he gives familiar objects new meaning.
Recognizability plays a crucial role in his artistic process. He questions established meanings and disrupts our horizon of expectation. Rather than seeking shock value, he uses the quiet presence of objects to charge them with reflection and poetry.
De Meyer reveals things as they might also be. Each work embodies a tension between the familiar and the unexpected. He teaches and encourages us to look at reality — and at ourselves — in a different, perhaps more attentive way.
His work balances between seriousness and humor, between instant reaction and contemplation. Nuance and hesitation, for him, are more compelling than dogmatic certainties. The conventional boundaries of meaning — of both everyday objects and artworks — are regularly challenged in Peter De Meyer’s practice.
As in a poem by Arjen Duinker, Peter De Meyer allows the object simply to be an object, while also revealing the mystery inherent in things — if only we look carefully and with an open gaze.
“On one side stands the thing.
On the other side stands the mystery.
Of the thing and the mystery I know no more.
…”
— Arjen Duinker, XXIV