Barbara Seiler

Barbara Seiler Galerie is proud to present Ante Timmermans’ (*1976 Belgium, lives and works in Zurich) first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Upon entering the gallery, the visitor is handed a time card and ask to stamp in. Bold letters remind him that „Errors and mistakes may be reported immediately.” Subsequently an antique time clock from the 60ties records his attendance: “Arrives” / “Leaves”. Control and Order are recurring themes in Ante Timmermans’ work, be it as surveillance cameras or satellite dish on large-size drawings, as text works like order / border control or as combination of image and text. Rubber stamps and time cards to control time and work progress manifest and reveal a world of surveillance, routine and repetitive processes.

Ante Timmermans’ drawings reflect everyday observations: barriers of construction sites, bars of livestock transports, electrical towers, junctions – things he perceives on the way to his studio. He records them on small format drawings, in an abridging manner and limited to the essential revealing that all these observations are ultimately based on just a few geometric figures – line, circle, oval, triangle. On large format drawings he combines these elements to fictitious, deserted cities and landscapes, which, upon closer examination, emerge as a repetitive sequence of geometric shapes.

In “Poesie der Langeweile” the artist abandons the architectural, stringent structures in favor of figurative elements and color shades following up on earlier, figurative and very poetic drawings. While colors had slowly been making their way into his recent drawings, be it in form of a rainbow connecting two skyscrapers or neon signs scattered among buildings, he now applies the full color spectrum, yet continuing and further developing the theme of control, order and routine. The absurd, which appears in many of his works, turns into “„Absurd Hero 1“, „Absurd Hero 2“ and „Scheinheld“, one of them wearing an overall of a blue-collar worker, referring to the time clock at the entrance of the exhibition. At the same time, text and the combination of text and image remain important elements.

Repetition and routine have a calming significance for Ante Timmermans despite their negative connotation. A video work in the exhibition shows horses trotting in a roundpen in clockwise and counter-clockwise circles. Another video work shows a car in a roundabout driving endless circles, a monotonous voice is repeating the sentence “es ist, immer, die alte Leier, leider, es ist immer die alte Leier”. Boredom turns into poetry: Die Poesie der Langeweile. And in the large format drawing titled „Poem about (Poetry of the Boredom)“ the letters of „A Poem about the Poetry of the Boredom“ form a mountain with a cable car leading up and down the mountain in sisyphus-manner.

Ante Timmermans had a solo show titled „Poesie des alltäglichen“ this summer at o.T. Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Luzern (CH). He participated in the group show „Voici un dessin suisse, 1990-2010“ at Musée Rath, Geneva (CH), which will be shown at Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (CH) from January 1 – April 4, 2011. His work was included in group shows at S.M.A.K., Ghent (BE) and Pinakothek der Moderne, München (DE). In 2009 he was selected for Swiss Art Awards 2009, Basel (CH).