Nele Tas (b. 1978, Lokeren) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2006, where she received a classical training in painting. In 2002, she obtained her master’s degree in Comparative Cultural Studies and in 2000 her first licentiate and candidature (‘99) in Indian Languages and Cultures at the University of Ghent (B) and the University of Leiden (NL). She resided with a host family in Bogor, Indonesia, during the academic year 1996-97 and attended the Regina Pacis school.
In terms of international activity, she has participated in the Beijing Biennale (2010) as well as the Den5 exhibition in Tokyo (2019, at the invitation of Yoko Enoki), the Salon in Vienna (2018, at the invitation of Katrin Plavcak) and several projects in the Netherlands (Museum Tongerlohuys and Lokaal 01) and Germany (Temporary City, Belgiumness). In Belgium, her paintings have been exhibited in the Beursschouwburg, MuZEE, WIELS project space (in an installation by Ada Van Hoorebeke), Factor 44 and Croxhapox as well as in a range of galleries (including Marion de Cannière and Koraalberg Gallery). Her work is included in the collections of the National Bank of Belgium, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Flemish University of Brussels, Ethias, the City of Ypres and the Letterenhuis (Museum of Literature) in Antwerp.
She seeks collaboration in the experimental exhibition project ‘Temporary City’, of which there have been three editions to date, each with different participants. Tas received an international project grant from the Flemish government and funding from both the Netherlands and Europe for the Berlin project in 2009. Two of the exhibitions were accompanied by publications. The first appeared in 2007: a collection of concise contributions by architecture critics and philosophers. The second took the form of an ‘exhibition diary’ kept by Christophe Van Gerrewey, with contributions by Tas (introduction), Christhope Tannert and Andreas Müller, the architect and scenographer with whom she worked. The designer was Katja Gretzinger (Revolver Publishing, Motto books, Berlin, Geneva & Tanger, 2009).
There is also a link with the university world, as demonstrated by assignments in collaboration with Karel Arnaut and Jan Blommaert for anthropological publications (including Language and Superdiversity, Routledge, 2016), but she has also produced work for magazines such as DWB (Home Sweet Home), Streven (covers of 2007) and A prior. She contributed to the RECUP festival in Theater Zuidpool in 2016.
Nele Tas occasionally lectures or writes about her work (Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel, 2022). She recently authored fra g menten (v e aaaa.... gezicht) ofte ‘rode wangetjes’ (2021). And: ‘Een bedenking bij de plaats van de schilderkunst’ for Marc Verminck (ed. ‘De plaats’ van de kunst, Sint-Lukas Books, 2010) and ‘Görlitzer Park: the B-sides’ (B-sides and rarities, Lokaal 01, De Nieuwe Grafische, Rotterdam, 2010). Whenever possible, she makes time and space to take up a residency. For example, she recently had a powerful work period in Studiogarden Verrewinkel (Uccle, Brussels, 2021).
In terms of international activity, she has participated in the Beijing Biennale (2010) as well as the Den5 exhibition in Tokyo (2019, at the invitation of Yoko Enoki), the Salon in Vienna (2018, at the invitation of Katrin Plavcak) and several projects in the Netherlands (Museum Tongerlohuys and Lokaal 01) and Germany (Temporary City, Belgiumness). In Belgium, her paintings have been exhibited in the Beursschouwburg, MuZEE, WIELS project space (in an installation by Ada Van Hoorebeke), Factor 44 and Croxhapox as well as in a range of galleries (including Marion de Cannière and Koraalberg Gallery). Her work is included in the collections of the National Bank of Belgium, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Flemish University of Brussels, Ethias, the City of Ypres and the Letterenhuis (Museum of Literature) in Antwerp.
She seeks collaboration in the experimental exhibition project ‘Temporary City’, of which there have been three editions to date, each with different participants. Tas received an international project grant from the Flemish government and funding from both the Netherlands and Europe for the Berlin project in 2009. Two of the exhibitions were accompanied by publications. The first appeared in 2007: a collection of concise contributions by architecture critics and philosophers. The second took the form of an ‘exhibition diary’ kept by Christophe Van Gerrewey, with contributions by Tas (introduction), Christhope Tannert and Andreas Müller, the architect and scenographer with whom she worked. The designer was Katja Gretzinger (Revolver Publishing, Motto books, Berlin, Geneva & Tanger, 2009).
There is also a link with the university world, as demonstrated by assignments in collaboration with Karel Arnaut and Jan Blommaert for anthropological publications (including Language and Superdiversity, Routledge, 2016), but she has also produced work for magazines such as DWB (Home Sweet Home), Streven (covers of 2007) and A prior. She contributed to the RECUP festival in Theater Zuidpool in 2016.
Nele Tas occasionally lectures or writes about her work (Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel, 2022). She recently authored fra g menten (v e aaaa.... gezicht) ofte ‘rode wangetjes’ (2021). And: ‘Een bedenking bij de plaats van de schilderkunst’ for Marc Verminck (ed. ‘De plaats’ van de kunst, Sint-Lukas Books, 2010) and ‘Görlitzer Park: the B-sides’ (B-sides and rarities, Lokaal 01, De Nieuwe Grafische, Rotterdam, 2010). Whenever possible, she makes time and space to take up a residency. For example, she recently had a powerful work period in Studiogarden Verrewinkel (Uccle, Brussels, 2021).
Artist Statement
Despite the many justified critical footnotes and fair attempts to undermine her credibility, Nele Tas subscribes to the power of painting. Not only does she believe in the possible connecting effect of an image, but also in its material embodiment, the painting as a ‘thing in the world’. An expansion of the world. But the true power of painting is best revealed in the limitations of the medium.
In the impossibility of reproducing an image identically, for example. In the mistakes and accidents that sneak in, in the ‘not-quite-precisely-what-I-wanted-to-make’ feeling. In the perpetual, often agonising alternation between executing and judging. In the physical limitation of the canvas on the stretcher and the sometimes pleasant, sometimes annoying viscosity of the paint. It is precisely these restrictions that the painter seeks to embrace in her practice. She is shaped by her own incompetence.
A painting is simultaneously: a place for lamp black and the white of a naked canvas. A gathering place for uncontrolled deviations, for colours that choose themselves and for yet another brushstroke that unintentionally slips away. For voids, errors, fractures. During the creative process, the canvas is also a hotbed of desire, frustration, disappointment and joy.
Nele Tas paints her current preoccupations. In the self-portraits that are doomed attempts at self-knowledge. Here, she actively seeks fragmentation and allows ‘holes and fractures’ to appear in the (self-)image. Oh Giorgio! is about desire, about a man and a woman and the discord between them. About life and giving life – motherhood of course! About the balance between creation and emergence.
Earlier series captured the movements and comings and goings in a park (Görlitzer Park), observed metropolitan life with an anthropological gaze (Coisolation) or our entirely individual approach to ‘rural life’ (Archive of Private Living) and the bizarre fences that demarcate what we call our ‘own’ (Hedge). Or show a series of crowns (Crowns) that eventually dissolves into an obsession with that of her mother (Chronicles).
In terms of subject matter, the oeuvre is varied. It charts the course of life, quoi. All this in the hope – in fact, in the conviction – that its scope transcends the painterly representation of an anthropological observation or an introspective search for a self. By ‘being in this world now’, it wants to touch the sensibilities of the viewer. On the way to a reflection, a confession, a conversation, ... connection perhaps?