Esther Tielemans

The American pop artist Barnett Newman once asked: “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?”. We can answer with certainty that Esther Tielemans definitely isn’t! Like a window, these two luminous panels open up into a new world: a dreamscape where reality and imagination melt into one. In this diptych, two vertical panels reflect one another along the centre axis. In the middle we see a gap, a small split resembling a crack in a cave. In the corners, a bright red bleeds into a soft pink, moving into a brilliant baby blue, then a minty green, ending in a sliver of bright yellow. The plains of pastel hues seem to expand the surface of the painting, creating landscapes of pure colors.

The pastel tones give the work a comforting feeling that make you come to a standstill; opening up a moment for contemplation. Come a little closer: you will see the print is mounted in a box-frame, hovering above the backing, as if floating. Is that a blue light being shone onto the panels, the shadowy reflections refracting beautiful colors? The limited edition print “Mirrored Light 2″ balances between the extremes of figuration and abstraction; the real and the illusory, the second and third dimension. Tielemans herself says about her work: “I research painting’s fundamentals; a suggested reality, a third dimension within a two-dimensional framework. To me, this semblance of reality runs parallel to our malleable world.”

Click here to read our interview “5 Questions to Esther Tielemans”.