Kunsthuis SYB

The way in which we shape our environment appears to be determined by our assumption that language and reality coincide. For example, when I describe a landscape, you will get an image of a landscape. But the latter never coincides with my description of the landscape, nor with the landscape as it appears to me when I walk through it. Can I even see this landscape without already thinking about it?

In the work of visual and textual artist Ruth Verraes, the landscape is stripped to the bones. In her installations, she is searching for a notion of a landscape that escapes the limits of language. She leaves everything that is easily put into words outside the framework of her photos, and subsequently reintroduces language in textual fragments, which she carefully positions in space, as if they were objects.

In Kunsthuis SYB, Ruth Verraes wants to let the reality, imagination and the description of the landscape come into contact with each other, despite their differences. During long walks, she collects the material for her work: words, colours, shapes, stories, notions, images etc. Walking and working alternate in a smooth dialogue with the landscape. At the same time, Verraes makes a second translation by asking artists and writers to define her work. This way, the landscape in and around Beetsterzwaag is viewed from all sides, deconstructed, processed and again constructed, and finally, presented to the visitor in a lecture, an installation and a visual essay.

Ruth Verraes (Kortrijk, 1980) lives and works in Amsterdam and temporarily in Berlin. She studied Graphic Design, Typography and Research at the St. Lucas in Gent and Visual Arts and Writing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Ruth Verraes is one of the initiators of the online archive of the former literary journal Raster and is on the editorial board of its successor Terras. In support of her residency in SYB, Verraes received an incentive grant from the Fonds BKVB.

Opening hours work period:
every Saturday and Sunday from 1 pm until 5 pm.

Final presentation Sunday June 10th:
12:00 brunch
14:00 presentation with interventions of artists Mathilde van Beekhuizen, Lotje van Lieshout, Richtje Reinsma en Arthur Stokvis.