Guest: Matthieu Ronsse

Matthieu Ronsse had his studio and residence in Poesthem, Etikhove, for several years. The spirit of the place reflected that of the artist. Poesthem is situated along the route of the Tour of Flanders. On the day of the race, Ronsse organized exhibitions there with fellow artists and opened his door to ​“whoever wanted to see.”

With the support of LUCA.breakout

A Chinese painter falls asleep watching the clouds, dreaming of Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez.

The figures in one of the flagships of Western art, Velázquez’s Las Meninas, fly out of the frame, fragmenting any attempt to create the perfect harmony sought by other aesthetic approaches. (Fergus Daly)

“Wind Water is part of ​‘Picture House’, a series of short films for BBC in which filmmakers like Paul Schrader and Claire Denis presented a painting in four minutes. I chose Velázquez’s Las Meninas. It’s a sort of primitive animation narrated in French with voice overs in Old Arabic, Spanish for the dog in the painting, and Mandarin for the 18^th century Chinese painter Shih‑T’ao, who explains the painting and who wrote a treatise that I use constantly, ​‘Reflections on Painting by the Monk Bitter Pumpkin’.” (Raúl Ruiz)

The Painting intercuts shots of traffic navigating the old-world remnants of downtown Bern, Switzerland, with details from a Flemish, 15^th-century altarpiece, ​“The Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus”. The painting shows the calm, near-naked saint in a peaceful landscape, a frozen moment before four horses tear his body to pieces while an audience of soigné nobles look on. In the movie’s revised version, Beavers gives it a comparably rarefied psychodramatic jolt, juxtaposing shots of Gregory Markopoulos, bisected by shafts of light, with a torn photo of himself and the recurring image of a shattered windowpane. (J. Hoberman)

“I re-edited The Painting and added to it an interior scene between Gregory and myself, which is juxtaposed to the figures in the painting. It introduces the theme of tearing as an emblem of intense emotion – the unity of destruction and unity.” (Robert Beavers)