Karolien Soete

TheArtCouch recently met with the Ghent-based artist Karolien Soete to discover her new work.

They form a break with the past, as well as a continuation of it, even a deepening of het major themes.

In this new work Karolien digs very deep in her own past. The objects she carried with her since het youth, the rooms in which she used to live, are projected with ink on large canvases. But memories are fragile, untrustworthy in a way.

They are the result of an inevitable process of decay. To reflect on this process Karolien crumples her works.

Slowly. Precisely, it almost seems. Those are the memories themselves she crumples, as a very conscious ritual.

Memories are personal. The crumbled pieces are therefore often shown as a formless unity on the ground, or hanging on the wall.

The viewer never gets a complete overview of the work. Some pieces will remain a mystery.  Not a secret though, viewers are welcome to peek into the work, move some folds to see more of what is behind some of them, but they will rarely get an overall picture of what is on them.

There will always be that mystery, just as with real memories…