Nosbaum Reding

The Nosbaum Reding gallery pays tribute to sculptor Bernd Lohaus through a group exhibition that seeks to offer a renewed perspective on his work. In counterpoint to his sculptures made from azobé wood salvaged along the banks of the Scheldt, the exhibition brings together Jacqueline Mesmaeker - architect of the structure of the line - and a group of contemporary artists: Luca Dal Vignale, Tina Gillen, Priscilla Gils, Karsten Krogh-Hansen, Gijs Milius, Ute Müller, Nele Tas, and Charlotte Vandenbroucke. Some of these artists are, moreover, graduates of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Together, they explore the foundational concepts in Lohaus’s practice: heightened spatial perception, tension and balance in composition, and a careful attention to the object’s presence—with the aim of staging an encounter between two protagonists: the viewer and the object.
 
A singular figure in sculpture, Bernd Lohaus consistently anchored his work in questions of language and the presence of the body, set against a backdrop of sculpture reduced to its mass - blocks whose volumes are articulated with the floor, the wall, the openings and closures of space. The exhibition, which presents both sculptures and paintings, revisits the paradox common to both mediums: the tendency to operate through processes of addition and subtraction in their relationship to material. In what way do Lohaus’s sculptures carry within them a dialogue between forms and a reflection on their history? And how do these assemblages of beams in display mode convey a generational legacy - one that persists in the becoming-sculpture of painting and in an ongoing reflection on the frame?