Toon Tellegen’s book, “Letters to Sleeping Beauty”, has greatly inspired this exhibition.

The book describes the story of a prince deciding that the time has come to find Sleeping Beauty and kiss her. He doesn’t know where she is to be found, what this voyage shall bring or what to expect from his journey as a whole. During the course of his one-year travel he writes her letters everyday.

The core of this exhibition aren’t fairy tales, not even  "Sleeping Beauty” herself, but another kind of beauty that goes further than hundred years of sleep: longing.

In today’s world, which appears to be fed by the immediate and the imminent, the notion of ‘longing’ seems to be part of “The dictionary of forgotten words”.

Sad story.

In my mind however, longing is this fascinating, lengthy process filled with desire, exaltation, doubt, disappointment, contradiction, poetry and hope. It’s a pursuit. It’s a thought on the move and yet steady. Delighting, enlightening and dark all together.

The uncertainty of this deep inner voyage has set the tone and therefore been the inspiration for the title of this exhibition, which is to be named, “Here be lions”.

“Here be lions”, echoes the medieval practice of putting dragons, lions or sea serpents in uncharted areas of the map.

Those are our prince’s territories.

“Here be lions” holds twelve artworks, representing the twelve months within a peculiar year, without any seasons.

The work is a rather dark piece established in black and white narrative, which appears to be set in a somewhat unconventional fairy tale décor, where the individual –the prince in this case- exudes awkwardness, as if there was something unnatural in his longing.

The images are not a statement. On the contrary, the door that leads to interpretation is wide open.

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