Thank You For The Delay

April 16—July 24, 2022

Harelbeke, Belgium

CAI Gallery is pleased to present Thank You For The Delay, a group exhibition taking on the notion of delay in the artistic process, and a quip reference to the re-opening of CAI Gallery’s exhibition program inaugurating the new exhibition space. The show presents six paintings and three limited edition photographic prints, showcasing the works by Ono En, Marco Reichert and Minh Dung Vu.

Generally speaking, a delay comes with an apology; “Sorry for the delay”. Our society is constructed in such a way that there is an enormous scarcity of time, resulting in not being able to lose any. As a result, a delay carries a very negative connotation. However, during a delay we can find rest, or achieve a better end result, simply by giving something some extra time. So, maybe we should—under the right circumstances—be thankful for the delay? Art is of course the privileged medium to escape from the hush and rush of daily life. It puts our life to a halt, due to its inherent ‘qualities of slowness’, escaping from the cascade of impulses and images in the contemporary era. Even more, the selected artists take this slowness a step further, as they implement it into their artistic process.

Ono En (born, living and residing nowhere) is a neo-conceptual artist and an anagram for ‘no one’, implying the main concept of the artist’s ultimate performance; the artist does not exist. This impossible absence of the artists results in an ongoing examination of metaphysics and illusion. Ono En presents three photographic prints of an in-situ installation in Portugal of what seem to be simple footprints. However, the footprints are not made by walking, but are sculpted by hand in the sand. Doing so, the artist creates a delay in the execution of the footprints, in order to achieve an illusion of a person walking—or rather, existing. Marco Reichert (born in 1979 in Berlin, Germany, where artist continues to work and reside) is a contemporary painter best known for his characteristic motives using wavy black horizontal lines, creating quasi-abstract paintings with a hint of imagined figuration. The delay of his artistic practice can be found in his unique and innovative implementation of computer technology. The horizontal lines are programmed in advance, as a structure, before being transferred onto the canvas, engaging in an artistic dialogue with the expressive interventions by the hand of the artist. Minh Dung Vu (born in 1994 in Vietnam, residing and working in Leipzig, Germany) is a contemporary painter who sews his compositions using dyed fabrics—most often silk—, instead of painting them. With minimal interventions, slowly effectuated due to the labor-intensive process, subtly textures arise creating an intriguing approach towards painting, materiality, light and shadow, and our perception of everything above.

The exhibition runs from April 16 until June 24 of 2022, by appointment only, at CAI Gallery in Harelbeke, Belgium.