“In the work of Stefaan van Biesen an associative solidity has arisen between thinking, acting, environment and well-being. Formulated as a question: how do our thoughts manifest themselves via acts in our environment and to what extent do they contribute to our well-being?” (fragment from ‘Dots’, Stef Van Bellingen, 2006).  

The body is experienced as an influential instrument, a subject that feels out its environment and resonates out of a sensitive thinking. The body thus moves in an optical and emotional field out of a panoramic perspective, a sanctuary.  

“Today we discover that thinking is a physical matter (…). Nowadays the embodied nature of subjectivity is emphasized. The body is thinking. I do not stand knowing, distant in this world. Through the body I rather have an understanding, a proximity with this world.” (Fragment from ‘The anarchistic body’, Francis Smets, 2004).  

Stefaan van Biesen’s way of thinking is in a current way in keeping with the nomadic aspect of the renaissance artists, who travelled all over Europe. Dürer is a striking example of this. These journeys were art projects, in which streams of thoughts, drawings and other artefacts arose from encounters. These journeys were laboratories of thoughts. Knowledge transformed into an impassioned knowledge. Stefaan van Biesen shows this lab. Notes, artefacts and drawings embellish his journey.

Van Biesen is a landscape artist. This does not mean that he spends his days painting idyllic nature scenes. No, the landscape artist works with the landscape, the environment. He integrates nature in his art or communicates with it by means of his art. In his artistic vision concepts like body-mind, nature-culture are no longer considered to be irreconcilable.  

The title ‘We are travelling spaces’ points to this philosophical track. ‘Nature’ is all what ‘man’ is and this puts everything in a wider context, a fact that is also important in an urbanized landscape.

Stefaan van Biesen has been working for some years now on several parallel projects in his own country and in Europe, among others:

- The installation ‘Skin’ around the ‘imaginary library’ with the painting of ‘San Girolamo nello studio’ of the renaissance painter Antonello da Messina, (1430-1479) as point of departure;

– A Gaspar David Friedrich project, in which the vision of this artist (1774-1840) is expressed in an contemporary way;

- A number of readings, performances and instant in situ-installations in the Milena art project ’Gepäckträger’ (Weimar, Berlin and Kassel, Germany) with old friends and fellow workers of the late Joseph Beuys, among others art historian Dr. Rhea Thönges Stringaris, an intimate bosom friend of this deceased German artist.

This introduction is in fact not more than a written train of thoughts. This goes for a poem as well, all-be-it less strict. The linear journey of the traveler recognizes its antipode in the encircling movement of the walker. If a written article can be considered as a purposeful trip, then an essay should rather be seen as a circuitous stroll, and a poem as a consciously aimless stray.  And it is precisely this stray which is often most significant. This is how the 17th century Dutch author Jacob Cats wrote a lot of his moralizing poems, either whilst strolling in the fields or in the big garden of his property Sorghvliet.The sight of a frog, a dead bee in a flower or a few hewed down trees inspired him to create most sublime poems of nature. These were later on (1646) bundled in “Hofgedachten”, which prompted me to choose the title for this text.Reflecting on some of Cats’ writings, they reveal an almost pre-romantic melancholy. A banal observation of ploughing farmer’s leads in this way to a rather cynical reverie about human transistorizes and it even has an ecological undertone.

The collection of poems “Letters to a traveler” by Stefaan van Biesen also often appears to be the result of a spontaneous association on a rather banal subject.The articulation of an “ordinary” experience most strongly confronts us with ourselves. Most of van Biesens’ texts create a dialogue themselves. “Writing is looking at yourself in the mirror.”The traveler from the title is the artist, who writes and reads simultaneously and molds his self-image on paper. On the one hand the fields of tension between present and past, and on the other hand between nature and culture, constantly present points of contact.The last lines of Stefaan van Biesens’ poem are as follows:

These sober words constitute the basis of an as sober self- portrait: the portrait of the artist in doubt, as traveler without destination.This melancholic self-image becomes even clearer in the performance on the videotape “My load is indefinable” (1992-94). On this video van Biesen makes a two-day trip with an unidentifiable, but rather heavy object on his back.This “story of an endless journey” signifies an accurate metaphor for the “aimless” artistry in a purposeless time, described as “post-modern”.

Van Biesens’ wandering and unsure attitude which appears from his texts and his arts of design, exemplary contrasts with the self-confident and fighting language from the manifests and actions of the early avant-garde (not for nothing a military conception). To hardcore modernists such as futurists and constructivists avant-garde was a synonym for civil war, and modernity equaled conflict. Their hatred for the middle-class conservatism matched their dislike of romantic melancholy and sentiment of nature. A futuristic slogan such as “Let’s kill the moonlight” should be read as an announcement of nature’s downfall. An image of nature, which was polluted by romance and bourgeoisie, had to give way to future and technology. As such the early modernism can be regarded as a cult of conflict, as the poetics of the polemic.The world-picture of the modernist consists of polarities: new versus old order, body versus spirit, and culture versus nature. 

Stefaan van Biesen opposes the aggressive image of modernity to the frail image of melancholy. In this others support him. Artists such as Jan Vercruysse, Thierry De Cordier and from the younger generation Ludwig Vandevelde, and Philip Aguirre, work in a similar field in which concepts like present-past, body-spirit and culture-nature are no longer regarded as irreconcilable. In this option the piece of art does not function as a weapon, but as a balm on the wounds caused by modernism.When melancholy is interpreted in this way it represents sadness and comfort at the same time. Stefaan van Biesen’s oeuvre shows similarities with several artistic traditions in which doubt and melancholy are important, such as certain aspects of mannerism and baroque, but also aspects of romanticism and symbolism. Besides this the artist does not experience the differences but the similarities, not the conflicts but the connections as essential and meaningful. 

Against his better judgment van Biesen creates a melancholic world-picture in which the (unreachable) unity of body and spirit, the (dis) continuity of present and past and the (impossible) reconciliation of culture and nature are in a central position. This world-picture is gradually created by an at the same time stubborn and traditional image of complex allegories and symbols, sentimental walks and letters, precious objects and materials, busy bees and threatened trees.As such van Biesen’s texts, drawings, sculptures, installations and videotapes are poetic moments in a search without purpose, with maybe the exception of comfort.

For the last few years the concept of “open-air exhibition” has been devaluating significantly. The budding of the trees and the first warm days more often coincides with open-air exhibitions of sculptures. To many organizers it is not art, but the catering industry and tourism, which are the most important instigators.

Gardens and parks are filled with multiform objects which do not belong there and which have the effect of a dog in a manger. It is difficult for a designing artist to fill up a space, which is not suitable for art. Both organizers and artists require a nuancing and tolerant attitude to avoid the traps of the genre. A thorough reflection in the necessity, context and concept of this project emerge. His first acquaintance with the location of Park ter Beuken confronted him with both the difficulties and possibilities of the place.

Of course a park is a most ambiguous place. It represents artificial nature amidst an urban surrounding. As a 19th century concept the town park is the hybrid result of enlightenment, romanticism and social utopia. Most of the big town parks such as Central Park in New York, have split up during the 20th century in utopia and its drawback, i.e. nightmare. The metropolitan park, which is during daytime an idyllic place for joggers and nannies, at night transforms into a dark setting of sexuality and terrorism. Landscape gardens and town parks have initially been designed for walking and leisure. Therefore they show characteristics of picturesque design created around moments of moving, thinking and looking. The park is circuit, a place of thought and a field of vision. It is a domesticated landscape for the inexperienced walker. There is no room for real nature. As intersection of present and past, of nature and culture, the park represents a kind of twilight zone, a fictitious space. 

It is this aspect, which seems to inspire Stefaan van Biesen. He tells us to consider the park ‘as an imaginary room in which I temporarily reside’. The title of his project, ‘An ear on the grass’, refers ‘to my situation as an observer and attentive listener to the dialectics of the place. I want to be there almost anonymously and disappear mentally. As such only what is shown is a remainder or still evidence of my presence during the preparation process. Because of van Biesen’s intention, the park is not just another background for a few existing sculptures. The completed works will function as temporary ephemeral props in a given space. Some of his performances, such as ‘Little House of Whispers’ and ‘Landscape/Mindscape’ even evoke associations with typical aspects of the English landscape garden; i.e. the follies. 

These fictious and imaginary creations were most famous between 1750 and 1850. Replicas of illustrious monuments, pseudo-ruins and pagodas and other picturesque constructions represented as it were the punctuation marks in the garden as cultural text. They created the landscape, offered metaphors and points of contact. Van Biesen’s interventions can be regarded as contemporary variants of these follies. Conscious of their artificiality, they manifest themselves jaunty in an as artificial surrounding. It is exactly through this artificiality that they show us the magnificent Absentee: Nature

On the video performance ‘Wild Man’ van Biesen transformed for an hour into a mythical savage man, a fictitious hybrid of culture and nature. The pursuit to be tuned in to nature results in caricature and parody. The stuck on vine leaves cannot disguise that even this bush native is cultural fiction.

As a poet, collector and walker Stefaan van Biesen, to some extent, seems to be a distant successor of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who saw nature as the sole comfort for his melancholy and disgust for modernity.

In his ‘Reveries du promeneur solitaire’ the elderly man describes in ten ‘promenades’ how the romantic musings and botanical walks made his stay on the virgin Ile de Saint Pierre the happiest period of his life. But at the same time he tries through his botanical research to penetrate that sublime and comforting nature. Rousseau’s biggest wish is to spend the rest of his life listing all floral varieties on the island:

‘On dit qu’un Allemand a fait un livre sur un zeste de citron; j’en aurois fait un sur chaque gramen de prés, sur chaque mousse des bois, sur chaque lichen qui tapisse les rochers; enfin je ne voulois pas laisser un poil d’herbe, pas un atome végétal qui ne fut amplement décrit’.

Rousseau’s research possibly is the most imaginable melancholic project. After all he tries to describe in detail what mostly escapes our mind. What remains is emptiness.

Johan Pas, Antwerp 1998.