EXHIBITION ‘OEEEEEEUUUUVVRE’ by Peter Morrens

11.10.2024 - 02.03.2025
Curator: Eva Wittocx

August 22, 2024

‘Richtingen’, Peter Morrens, 2020, Flemish Community Collection at M Leuven, photo: We Document Art, courtesy Kristof De Clercq Gallery

Press release

This autumn, with 'OEEEEEEUUUUVVRE', M Leuven is devoting an extensive solo exhibition to the multifaceted work of Peter Morrens. With a particular scenography tailor-made for five monumental exhibition rooms, from 10 October 2024 M will present a comprehensive overview of Morrens' practice over the past 35 years. New work, encounters and collaborations with other artists and artworks will also have their place in the exhibition, which aims to look back as well as forward and open up new perspectives.

Since the 1980s, Belgian artist Peter Morrens has been working on an oeuvre that places him at the forefront of the contemporary art scene. This first museum solo zooms in on the diversity of his practice, with paintings, drawings, photographs, installations and performances.

‘On a regular basis, M brings an underexposed but important Belgian artist into the limelight,’ says chairman of M and alderman for culture Bert Cornillie. ‘Peter Morrens not only presents an overview of his extensive oeuvre, we are also delighted that he includes M's collection in his exhibition. The exhibition at M can be seen as one large installation, with an overview of his oeuvre, numerous new productions and an integration of works from the M collection. The exhibition aims to challenge, inspire, excite and confuse the visitor.’

Using poignant images, playing with language and a special kind of disruptive humour, Peter Morrens questions the world around him and prevailing conventions, such as our everyday use of language, social behaviour, existential doubt, the conventions in the art world, and prevailing political-social positions.

‘I never know in advance where I want to go with a piece. I know where the starting point is, but never where I will end up. I want to try everything.’

Peter Morrens starts from words, images, sounds or other objects that catch his eye or appeal to him in his daily life. He proceeds partly intuitively: coincidence and doubt play a part. He wants to translate his amazement at and about the world into captivating images that fascinate, intrigue and cause reflection. As a maker, he thereby acts as a kind of jammer: he picks something up and isolates, twists or distorts it in such a way that the ‘ordinary’ and self-evident prompts reflection again. But always with a focus on poetry and beauty.

Through time and space

In Peter Morrens's oeuvre, individual works are often interconnected. One could argue that it is constantly in motion: a work builds on another image, text or audio fragment that is then transformed back into an image. A clear chronology is thus broken, an illustration of Morrens' cyclical experience of time. He reproduces a work in multiple versions, uses reproductions of earlier work in new materials and combinations, reworks drawings or enlarges a ‘residual fragment’ into a huge wall drawing.

The artist likes to challenge existing exhibition formats – such as the classically constructed retrospective. In this exhibition, there is no linear time frame, with clear beginnings or endings, old or new. Indeed, for Peter Morrens, a work of art can only be experienced in the ‘now’. The scenography is created with a view to that physical encounter with the viewer, including a monumental showcase that crosses several rooms and thus forms a connecting element.

Collaborations

Through a variety of collaborations, Peter Morrens creates encounters that give new meanings to his own work. These collaborations are a constant in his practice, both in individual works and through the integration of other artists in his exhibitions. Together with Rik De Boe, Morrens was curator of artist-run initiative Voorkamer in Lier for a long time, where he gave many other artistic voices a platform. In this solo exhibition, too, he continues this connection with other artists he admires or feels akin to. He also enters into a special dialogue with several of the museum's collection pieces in M.

Curator of the exhibition is Eva Wittocx.

As part of this exhibition, a new publication, a first overview book, will appear in collaboration with Oktober Publications, with texts by Ronald Van De Sompel and Eva Wittocx.

Peter Morrens (°1965) lives and works in Antwerp, and teaches at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. He has had solo exhibitions at, among others, Club Solo, (Breda, 2023), Valerie Traan Gallery (Antwerp, 2022), de Warande (Turnhout, 2021), Les Brasseurs Art Contemporain (Liège, 2017) and Art Page Gallery (New York, 2000). He is represented by Kristof De Clercq Gallery in Ghent, where he regularly exhibits his work. Morrens was co-founder and co-artistic director (together with Rik De Boe) of artist-run initiative Voorkamer in Lier between 1996 and 2016.

His work is present in numerous private and public collections, including those of S.M.A.K. Ghent, Flemish Community Collection and M Leuven. In 2022, Morrens was a guest at the performance festival Playground in Leuven. His work can currently be seen in the collection exhibitions at M.