Article       Stefaan van Biesen lays an ear on the grass  [ 1998 ]
	Lokeren always succeeds in achieving a high level with its modest summer open-air expositions in Park Ter Beuken. This summer Stefaan Van Biesen starts an intense conversation with the dark, fairy-tale side of the park with its age-old trees. The artist says that he considers the park mainly 'as an imaginary room, which he is staying in'. This stay resulted in a wonderful exposition.
	An ear on the grass, the title of the exposition, refers "to my position as observer of and attentive listener to the dialectic of the place. I want to be there nearly anonymously and disappear in it mentally, so that only what is on display is a remnant or still evidence of my presence during the preparation process." This is a quote from the catalogue text of Johan Pas. But one does not need the catalogue to be able to enjoy this exposition. The statues of Stefaan Van Biesen speak for themselves. They are somewhat old-fashioned and romantic, but exceed the categorisation thanks to their fascinating formal articulation.
	The stone statue hanging straight down from a branch, Valeriaan, is breathtakingly beautiful and this precisely because of its perfectly stylised realisation. This hanging straight down like a plumb line is strengthened by two belts with cross connections, which the statue is hung in and which come closer to each other the higher you go, thus increasing the illusion of height. The stone statue itself with its polished form also makes you think of a plumb line. It is a kind of flat cone, which gets an abstracted human face with a stylised nose. But still, under this taut form slumbers a kind of staggerer: a human being hanging upside down with its head.
	It is the first statue already dating from 1993, which you meet beside the winding path in the park with ponds. The second statue can be found against the old wall on the other side of the path. It is a brown square pillar with a moulded nose on top of it and some branches and leaves as a crown. In this statue, which appeals to our childlike imagination in which trees get human features, Van Biesen creates a tension between the geometric form of the pillar and the organic elements.
	This contrast is also present in the fabulous ‘Whispering house’ (1998), which is placed at the foot of a big tree. The little house with its taut form leans against the stem with its slanting roof. It makes us look to nature in an artificial way through the groove in the back wall, through which you can only see a strip of the stem. Once again there is the contrast between culture and nature, which is characteristic for the park. As a romantic creation from the 19th century the public park also offers an ambiguous character: a piece of tamed nature in an urban context to simmer down, but also a place of child molesters and assailants.
	This ambiguity is perceptible for instance in the work with the cushions tied high up to the stems of the trees. Images of feet are printed on the front of the cushions: images of a previous video performance showing Van Biesen dancing on the parquet like a wild man dressed in vine leaves. The mythic wild man in this performance is a harrowing parody of the myth of man in his natural state. The sculpture Landscape/Mindscape a little further down is a hanging transparent hood with a wooden edge at eye level. When you go and stand under it, you come into another world. The hood functions as a kind of sound catcher: what was an unspoken background noise just moments ago, now seems to fall apart into separate components. One becomes very much aware of the water streaming in the pond a little further up for example. A panorama of a large field with beehives has been attached to the inside of the round wooden edge at eye level. After spending some time under the round hood, one loses one’s orientation. So Van Biesen also knows how to evoke vivid experiences without appealing to a language of romantic forms.
	Beehives are not only depicted on the panorama under the transparent hood. Van Biesen also made one on the other side of the stone bridge. The work of art ‘De werkster’ (= the Woman Worker) consists of a simple square beehive with an enormous ball dress on a thread. The last work of art in Park Ter Beuken with excavated shadows of a high wire walker in the lawn draws a bit of a blank. In this park exposition Stefaan Van Biesen nevertheless reveals himself as an interesting 'melancholic' artist certainly worth noticing.
	Eric Bracke, De Morgen, De Morgen, June 1998.
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