EXHIBITION // THE WALL - WERNER MANNAERS // ALMINE RECH // BRUSSELS

© Almine Rech - The Wall: Werner Mannaers

The Wall: Werner Mannaers - To Make Meringue, You Must Beat The Egg
From 07 Mar. to 13 Apr. 2024

Abdijstraat 20
Rue de l’Abbaye
1050 Brussels BE


www.alminerech.com

Almine Rech Brussels is pleased to present To Make Meringue, You Must Beat The Egg, Werner Mannaers' first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from March 7 to April 13, 2024.

The drawings (and paintings) are a boundless exploration of form, rhythm, repetition, layering, imagination, nuance, play... You may have noticed that I have firmly avoided the word 'abstract'. To teasingly push the point - in whatever direction - I would call Werner Mannaers a figurative painter. This to make it clear that the act of categorising a visual language can only simplify an artistic reality. Of course, the artist's work is more closely aligned with a tradition of painters labelled as abstract. But I deliberately distance myself from this. Because Werner Mannaers' work is also a way of being alive, the belief that drawing and painting can be a form of resistance, a response to the instrumentalisation of our world, and thus to the instrumentalisation of art. Perhaps Werner Mannaers is the kind of artist that does the following: "Making the problem part of the viewer".

- Philippe Van Cauteren (S.M.A.K Artistic Director), Berlin, January 14 2024