Ann Van Hoey

Folds, breath, silence

September 4 - November 4, 2021

Ann Van Hoey. White Object 2021, porcelain, porcelain, h. 15 x 20 x 12 cm

Using a system of cuts, incisions and successive folds somewhat reminiscent of the Japanese origami technique, Ann Van Hoey creates forms where geometric rigour and sobriety of expression accentuate the elegant poetry of the lines and volumes. The artist leaves nothing to chance, expressing a search for perfection and great simplicity that turn these “objects” into true sculptures. Twenty-five pieces make up this new ensemble. Four bronze versions are also presented.

Exhibition catalogue
Ann Van Hoey in The Eye

The sculptures are invested with the unique quality inherent to working with clay: its suppleness allowing solid or hollow flexions and inflexions, so gentle and so fine that they seem to result from a living breath. This confers the object – otherwise defined with the minimalistic clarity dear to the artist ¬– a very moving beauty and an inhabited presence. The limits of the object are thus transcended without being abolished: even made of bronze, the sculptures retain the specificities of a ceramic object, its form isolated in the space, its preciousness, its format, its decorative purpose; they are “table top” sculptures that you can take in your hands, in a relationship of domestic closeness. They possess both the highest plastic and poetic qualities and the simplicity of an object, are simultaneously shiny, precious, almost enigmatic in their sobriety and humble. As such, and in spite of their “classic modernist” aspect, these proposals appear very new to us.
Manuel Jover
journalist and art critic, Excerpt from the exhibition catalog.