Sunflower, honey bee, mosquito, knot, coot, hand, Monobloc chair
Full of wonder, Chant van Lieshout (1994, Geldrop, NL) wanders through forests, across moors and along waters, collecting things and thoughts that form the basis for sculptures and installations. It is precisely the small, banal, misunderstood and incomprehensible things that seem to fascinate Van Lieshout the most. Not surprisingly, world’s most common animals, insects, are so important to their practice. Along with these creepy-crawlies, toys and game elements often appear in Van Lieshout’s work, in which a childlike naïve playfulness takes an important role. Deploying this playfulness together with personal stories creates a poetic humour as a weapon to make difficult subjects, elusive realities and the overwhelming inaccessibility of the universe more manageable. Van Lieshout plays with discomfort, not to shock but to expose vulnerability that translates into a tragicomic visual language in which a desire for understanding and connection shines through.