21
Aug/15

PATRICK VAN CAECKENBERGH

21
Aug/15
Patrick Van Caeckenbergh creates a kind of alternate Garden of Eden in his first exhibition at Lehmann Maupin (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Patrick Van Caeckenbergh creates a kind of alternate Garden of Eden in his first exhibition at Lehmann Maupin (photo courtesy Lehmann Maupin)

Lehmann Maupin
201 Chrystie St. between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Through August 21, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-254-0054
www.lehmannmaupin.com

Flanders-based Belgian artist Patrick Van Caeckenbergh has transformed Lehmann Maupin’s Lower East Side space into a forest of wonder, using his memory and his imagination, combining dazzling drawings of trees with a curious sculptural installation. A compulsive, and by some accounts reclusive, collector, cataloger, and tinkerer, Van Caeckenbergh spent seven years making graphite drawings of trees inspired by those in his garden, as well as other parts of Belgium, each one a unique Tree of Life or Tree of Knowledge. The black-and-white framed works in “Drawings of Old Trees during the wintry days 2007-2014” at first appear to be photographs but upon closer inspection are revealed to be obsessively intricate pencil and paint depictions of trees with thick trunks and endless leafless branches, enhanced by such fairy-tale elements as windows, doors, bells, and faces. In the center of the gallery is “THE PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF EMPTINESS, Les Oubliettes – The Oblivions – De Vergeetputten,” mirrored metal shelves that hold nearly three hundred dust-covered glass bell jars that once contained statues of saints but became so much detritus with a downturn in religious belief in Flanders. The vast emptiness seems to go on ad infinitum in the mirrors at the top and bottom, almost as if the Garden of Eden is now devoid of Adam and Eve, or anyone at all. Van Caeckenbergh, a collagist and amateur genealogist who has extensively investigated the digestive system of both animals and humans and, in “The Grave” (1986), paid tribute to six of his major influences — Joseph Beuys, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers, René Magritte, and Andy Warhol — includes a playful interactive bonus with “Het Muziekbos — The Musical Forest,” which he also calls “the nature guide to the Bialowieza primeval forest” in Poland, an antique table featuring a vaguely antique-looking hinged wooden box holding sixty-three small reproductions of his tree drawings on heavy card stock. People are invited to browse them, then curate their own mini-exhibition by choosing any two to place display stands on either side of the box.