The World Is Your Stage! Thomas Verstraeten at FRED&FERRY
Thomas (Millennial, Belgian) entangles the gallery space with theater, soccer & the city.
Stage And The City
Thomas turned the gallery into a street: The floor was plastered with a photorealistic velours rug imitating concrete full of filth. But the illusion wasn’t perfect, the rug was patchworked with shifting color gradients like pixels on Google Street View. The setup appeared surreal. While the benches and trash cans were normally sized, street lanterns, traffic lights, and a bus stop seemed shrunk. Enough irregularity to make me wonder whether I accidentally ended up in the kids section of an amusement park.
I see two photographs of the same town square. A Chinatown gate (a paifang, to use the right word) caught my eye. The space is apocalyptically void, with no soul in sight. Comparing them, I realize that they aren’t identical pictures taken at different times of the day. The light source can’t be natural, the spotlight is too harsh. I’m not looking at a square: I’m looking at a theater stage.
Using a local approach, Thomas named the exhibition after the Seefhoek, a northern district of Antwerp. Or shall I say: that’s where the show is staged?
What could interest Thomas in the Seefhoek? I put on my swimming goggles and dove into another Wikipedia rabbit hole: So the Seefhoek developed as a working-class neighborhood in the mid-19th century and became increasingly diverse in the last few decades. In 1988, a documentary aired on the right-wing separatist party Vlaams Blok which became big in the Seefhoek. A detail probably nobody but me cares about is that Matthias Schoenaerts (Gen X, Belgian) is from the Seefhoek. I loved his performance in Far From the Madding Crowd (2015). Does that have anything to do with Thomas’s show? Nope. But my blog, my rules.
So we’re dealing with a district with a turbulent history here. And if I had read the press release earlier, I would have learned that Thomas lives there as well. Together with around 500 other residents, he created a seven-part location project in September 2023. This exhibition now focuses on four projects from the series.
As I walk on, I see paper models in glass containers. In one of them, I recognize the same square from earlier. The paper model layers the square with a person and a proscenium arch, you know, the gate-like part of a theater stage closest to the audience, often beautifully decorated with ornaments. Framing that city square as a set design, I suddenly see the Chinatown gate under a new light 🥁. Don’t roll your eyes, you can appreciate a pun, can’t you?
Doesn’t basically every bigger city have a Chinatown marked by such a gate? I never questioned this architectural element until now. It’s similar to a proscenium arch, dividing the audience from the theater stage, suggesting that by crossing it, you’re in a different world. A world less real perhaps? A Disneylandified world? A world that exists only for an audience?
Playing the Game
When I initially entered the gallery, the very first work I saw was the video 21st Century Portrait (2024) of young people playing soccer. Well, I kind of saw them playing soccer. They were on a field, there were people watching and cheering, but… I didn’t see the actual match. Somehow, I only caught the moments in between, players waiting for the referee, preparing their move, and victory celebrations. And again, that glaring spotlight and the cinematic rain, just like on TV…
I’m observing a general trend right now in investigating the devotion of soccer. There’s Jody Korbach’s (Millennial, German) aggressive fan culture work, Hamburger Bahnhof showed Marianna Simnett’s (Millennial, British) ecstatic gaze on soccer this summer, and Museum Abteiberg will do a show with Ari Benjamin Meyers (Gen X, US-American) featuring an artistic investigation of Borussia Mönchengladbach next year.
While I saw the intrigue in the videos, I didn’t get what was going on with Thomas’s 21st Century Portrait - News (2024) series: I just saw framed newspaper front pages featuring soccer games…??? And??? So what??? Was it about the headlines? The other news that got only a byline? The fact that Daily Mirror gave UK’s out at the Euro Cup a full page while political news such as Donnie’s ear getting Van Goghed at the rally only got a slit? And it was while writing this review that I finally saw it: Thomas inserted the pictures of the kids playing soccer in his video into the newspaper! Now this has become such a wholesome gesture: It feels like encouragement, like they really can make it one day! You know the rules of manifestation? Fake it till you make it.
We’re getting theatrical again with the video Met de krik ketsen (2024): Kids play cricket on a field at night under a glaring spotlight, the camera exposing everything in a panoramic shot. Behind them, a huge painted backdrop. But even the real building silhouette of Antwerp in the distance looks like set design at this point. The theater is everywhere.
I enjoyed the film Looking for Harmony (2024) a lot. The camera follows people on a bright sunny day walking through the city. They carry speakers playing music. I hear Despacito, Adele‘s Easy On Me, that one Elton John song he made with Dua Lipa… Music from open car windows and speakers mixes and mingles on the street. A lovely sight: Everyone with their own soundtrack becomes the main character of their own story. I was kinda disappointed to find out that it was staged, Thomas gave the people the speakers to play their favorite song. But this charming city soundscape could have happened anywhere just like that.
Preaching to the Choir?
Arriving upstairs, I join in to see the last couple minutes of a round-about 30-minute video. There’s the town square set design I’ve seen earlier downstairs. A man stands on the stage. Below him, an orchestra performs. First, I thought they were tuning their instruments, then I heard the melody. A beautiful one. Passionate, borderline aggressive. The man onstage is conducting them with fitting powerful gestures. But wait, he’s not the conductor. As the camera comes closer, painfully slow, I see his movements and those of the orchestra aren’t in sync. Is he yelling at someone? Is he the stage director asking someone to turn the damn lights the right direction? I can’t hear him. Likely, nobody can, so that’s not plausible.
The camera’s a bit closer now. The suit and tie, the black book in his hand, the expressive gestures. The mannerisms are giving evangelical pastor, I know what I’m talking about. And then, even closer, I begin to hear him barely. The music ceases, and now a spotlight’s on him. He is in fact preaching. Preaching about the love of God that no sin can take away. As he says Amen, the camera stops at his face and the screen turns black: Urbi et Orbi. I don’t feel like Thomas is making fun of the preacher. So much work to only to do a church satire? I don’t think so.
Let’s look at the title again: Urbi et Orbi. It’s the Pope’s blessing to the people. The Latin origin of the phrase refers to the position of the Pope as both the clerical ruler of the city of Rome and the whole world. City life and religion have been connected for centuries, though the consequences of this political alliance are debatable. It turns out this man preaches every week on Astridplein and Thomas asked him to perform his sermon at the Bourla Theater. Another interesting detail from my Wikipedia deep dive: “The Bourla is the last remaining municipal theatre in Europe with original stage machinery” from 1834.
So many layers meet in this work. What changes with the stage? Is theater the lie or the revelation of truth? On a more general note, maybe people need more hope. That Amen might have been a good last word for this show.
Thomas Verstraeten: Seefhoek Series was on view from November 23 to December 22, 2024 at FRED&FERRY.
FRED&FERRY
Leopoldsplaats 12
2000 Antwerp
Website
Instagram: @_fredferry_ @verstraeten_thomas
Wow, 2024 is almost over! That’s the last exhibition review for this year. Next week, we’re counting down my 10 favorite works and artists of this year.
I wish you wonderful holidays!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic