ZERO’s Verheyen debut at Vervoordt Hong Kong

Jef Verheyen (Belgium, 1932-1984)’s first solo show by Axel Vervoordt is also the first time his paintings will be shown in Asia.  As so beautifully said in the catalog, Colors preside over Verheyen’s paintings, Colors represent the artist’s interpretation of the world and the way we perceive nature and eternality.  As Colors enwrap us we lose a sense of spatiality, and everything surrounding us becomes transparent.  His work makes us experience light and dark, depth and surface, two-dimensionality and non-dimensionality.  For him, looking was not the same as seeing.  According to Verheyen, seeing was “feeling with the eyes”.

Verheyen painted light as he searched for essence in experience.  Reminiscent of Dan Flavin’s light installations from around the same time, Verheyn never gave up on the traditional mediums such as canvas, paint and brush. 

Recently, Verheyen’s painting has been reexamined in the history of art and as an important part of the avant-garde group, ZERO.  He was a close friend to Lucio Fontana throughout his life, and well-connected to the best-known German ZERO artists such as Otto Piene and Heinz Mack. He had a strong universal knowledge and was respected among fellow artists – Fontana called him “his teacher in life”.  Verheyen was included in the Venice Biennale in 1970 and included in the recent ZERO retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim, New York (October 2014-January 2015)

For more about ZERO, this post WWII “start from scratch” movement, see Roberta Smith’s excellent review in The NY Times here.

The work seems especially relevant today, especially in consideration of the zombie formalist debates that were highly discussed in 2014. For further reading about zombie formalism, see here.