THE WAITING ROOM BY FRANK MAIEU IN ANTWERP
presented by Adriaan Raemdonck in his gallery De Zwarte Panter
photography and words by Massimo Pacifico
Adriaan Raemdonck, gallery artist, and artist Frank Maieu, both Belgians, are really happily laughing commenting on Maieu’s last work, exposed at De Zwarte Panter at n. 70-74 Hoogstraat, the most transgressive street in Antwerp, Belgium. Both are not new to the contemporary art market. Adrian, having finished his studies at the local Academy of Fine Arts, opened the first exhibition space for young artists in the city already in 1968, and Franck first exhibited in 1964 at the local Kunstkamer at only twelve years old.
They have lived with Art and with Art still enjoy themselves. They frequent irony with conviction, and this personal exhibition of Frank proves it. The exhibition is called De Wachtzaal (The Waiting Room). In a dozen panels, with a nativity scene figurine technique, Frank represents the place where patients sit waiting to be received by their psychiatrist, Dr. Freud, always with a cigar in his right hand. A theme that the artist had already faced in 1995 in his painting Au suivant! (Next one!).
Two things are common to the patients: psychopathy and the profession. In fact, they are all the most famous artists of the “modern”.
Next to Picasso, Calder and Man Ray are waiting, Baselitz who paints head down and Bacon who holds a slice of bacon on an injured eye while Pollock vomits paint … Buys and Dalí, Koons and Cicciolina, Magritte and Cobra, Toulouse-Lautrec and Duchamp … Giacometti injects Barolo into the vein, and dollars rush out of Warhol’s wig … Schiele’s intemperances are cooled by a firefighter nurse … Ai Weiwei picks up the pieces of a Chinese vase to recompose them … Baker is not missing either, in red shoes … Munch screams … Frieda Kahlo dandles the dream of communism … The others, you need to recognize, they are all, or almost all, below!
The exhibition will remain open until 3rd September 2017.
