Antwerp
The transformation - Veronika Pot
09.01 — 21.02.2015

The Transformation ( 2014- 2015) This is the third part of a project I have been working on for a number of years: Arcadia, the utopian country of Greek Antiquity. Chantal Pattyn wrote about the expo at the Paardenstallen in Kortrijk:  "After 'Life in the Woods' and 'The Life in Us', the Broelmuseum now presents the apotheosis of this mental exercise about Arcadia, that Eldorado of romance, where death also rules, entitled: The Transformation. When I visited her studio a couple of weeks ago you could take this transformation almost literally.  The work had taken on different sizes, I saw smaller works in colour, but mostly: Arcadia was finally gone. Or better still: only the idea remained. Because looking at the series of photographs on the walls, all I could think was that I had arrived in some kind of a world after the Apocalypse. There is no drama in these photos, everything has gone quiet. There is no wind, the dust has settled on people, nature and buildings. What remains is a photographic reminder. A memento mori. An after-picture. A reverie without an opinion. And without cause. No idea what disaster hit the planet. Who knows, maybe when this photograph was made, nothing was moving, simple as that. It was like looking at the evidence of a forensic investigation. I didn't feel any sadness, just a feeling of melancholy.

 

Looking at the different ways how Veronika Pot had portrayed the contradictions between night and day, light and dark and life and death. I still want to make one correction and replace the term after-picture by in between-picture. Because with this artist’s work you never know what will transpire. Something has changed, simple as that.Transformed. And only she knows what happened."