Bo Stokkermans – This Art Fair 2022. Photo: Hussel Zhu.

Vernissage — Saturday 28 March – 2.00 pm
+ 8.00 pm — 'Full Moon - Tarot Card Reading'
FRED&FERRY – Antwerpen

Dear,

It is our great pleasure to invite you to the opening of the exhibition by Bo Stokkermans.

In his work, Bo Stokkermans (1995, The Hague) explores the relationship between the artist, the material and the environment. His practice emerged partly outside the institutional art context, when he left art school to live and work for a year and a half from a self-built cargo bike in public spaces. That experience still forms the basis for his approach to art as a form of action and exchange.

For his first solo exhibition in Belgium, entitled ‘Snakes and Ladders’, Bo Stokkermans has created new works in glass, modular brooms and conceived doors that transform the upper gallery into a new experience, with the eponymous board game serving as an inspiring metaphor.

Alongside this new exhibition, works by Jana Coorevits and Krystel Geerts are also on display. Jana’s presentation “luchtvlak⠀⠀landschap⠀⠀zon, maan”, remains in its current form, whilst Krystel’s presentation "Imprints" will be shown in a new configuration.

We look forward to welcome you!

FRED&FERRY

↳ Extra

Following the opening on 28 March, we are organising a Full Moon Tarot Card Reading at 8.00 pm, led by Roger Cremers and Doina Kraal. The artists will bring their special set of tarot cards, which they designed in collaboration with Professor Kurt Vanhoutte of the University of Antwerp, based on the circus and fairground collections of Allard Pierson, the museum and knowledge institute for the heritage collections of the University of Amsterdam.

The Moon will be 80.6% illuminated that evening and will reach its highest point in the sky at 9.39 pm, at an altitude of 55.7° above the southern horizon. The distance between the Earth and the Moon on that day will be 379,253 kilometres.

Bo Stokkermans currently works with materials and techniques such as glass, felt, oil paint, CNC milling and 3D printing. Through direct interaction with these processes, he develops forms that emerge from a growing visual library of gestures, influenced by (post-)graffiti, graphic imagery and ornamentation. Through stacking, deforming and abstracting, intuitive, often semi-modular compositions emerge that in turn enable new interactions.

In his approach, Stokkermans draws on ideas from Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, as well as experimental art practices such as those of Tehching Hsieh, SAEIO megawizzard and movements such as Fluxus and CoBrA.

His work has been exhibited at venues including the Stedelijk Museum Breda, the Museum Jan Cunen and at This Art Fair. Publications on his work have appeared in Metropolis M and Mister Motley. His practice is supported by Ruby Soho Gallery.

“luchtvlak⠀⠀ landschap⠀⠀⠀zon, maan” is a significant next step in Jana Coorevits' artistic development, in which she remains true to her own rhythm and conditions. Her research into how subtle changes in movement, matter, light, and perception influence one another underscores her search for a (visual) language that resists fixed meanings and allows space for association and reinterpretation.

With a special focus on material image production and traditional techniques, the exhibition results in a poetic exploration of analogue photography revolving around - and in dialogue with - the moon.

Jana Coorevits uses a subtle, minimalist approach to explore the relationship between body, space and time, blurring the boundary between the personal and the cosmic. Her work opens up a contemplative space in which the act of looking itself takes centre stage — an invitation to be present in the moment without having to interpret it.

The works of Krystel Geerts are united by the intangible nature of their surfaces and materiality. They appear fragile and open, like blurred memories of Baroque architecture, not least because the process of their creation is inscribed in the works.

Her sculptural practice investigates how form can function as a carrier. Drawing from the body and architecture, her work evolves through a somatic process in which the body functions simultaneously as measure and limit. She approaches the world as a field of infinite folds, unfolding not only in material form but also through experience.

Krystel Geerts' works blur the line between memory and reality with fragile, Baroque-inspired images, exploring how appearance and reality are increasingly intertwined in our digital world, creating a sense of a fragmented world.

In his most recent series, created especially for Art Brussels, Antoine Waterkeyn continues his critical and narrative practice. Focusing on power, myth and the manipulation of images, this time he turns his attention to figures from the Habsburg dynasty and the European aristocracy.

Waterkeyn explores how old elites still resonate in the imagination of today, and how conspiracy theories – from reptiles ruling the world to aristocratic women drinking blood to preserve their youth – give these historical figures a new, grotesque relevance. The result is a visual universe in which satire, history and contemporary paranoia merge.

His paintings balance between seriousness and absurdity, between heritage and fiction. They raise questions about how power perpetuates itself, how visual language colours our collective memory, and how conspiracy thinking becomes both a critique and a caricature of the world in which we live.

With this series, Waterkeyn aims not only to reveal the dark sides of power structures, but also the fascination and imagination that accompany them. The works thus open up a space where art history, social debate and contemporary myths intersect – a critical and playful contribution to the way in which visual language colours our history and contemporary imagination.