While Ostend’s contemporary art museum Mu.ZEE is renovating, the museum is staging a series of exhibitions at a different location: the Venetian Galleries on the Ostend promenade. ‘It's Sunday at Sea! ’ showcases art about fishermen and holidaymakers, about the passage of time or destructive plastic pollution. The sea remains the main character throughout. Works by Léon Spilliaert, James Ensor, Guillaume Bijl, Lili Dujourie and Maarten Vanden Eynde are all on show.
The Ostend museum in a former department store in the Romestraat is undergoing three years of renovation. In the meantime, artworks are on loan to other museums, but temporary exhibitions are also being set up, like the one in the Venetian Galleries, on Ostend's seafront.
‘It's a Sunday on the Sea!’ is the title and the common thread. It is a verse by poet Emile Verhaeren, from his long poem “Vers la mer”. Verhaeren was a close friend and admirer of James Ensor. 'Il fait dimanche sur la mer!" is also the name of a video installation by Belgian contemporary artist Lili Dujourie. Seven video screens show the surf on seven different days.
In the long walkway of the Venetian Galleries, you encounter works that have fittingly been brought together. Next to a scene with seamen by Constantin Meunier hangs a sculpture with ship's ropes by Bernd Lohaus.
There’s a “Somber marine” by Constant Permeke as well as a mirror on a beach by Roger Raveel. Admire abstract blue paintings by Robert Clique, with one line separating sky and sea, a giant wave of ceramics by Johan Creten and Guillaume Bijl's entertaining shell souvenir shop.
Léon Spilliaert, who so often depicted the Ostend coast and the sea, also features in this Mu.ZEE exhibition. Spilliaert worked mainly on paper, with ink or watercolours. To protect the works they are being stored in cupboards that the visitors open.
A behind-the-scenes peek at the museum depot
Another experiment in the Venetian Galleries is the depot in two rooms at the rear.
"An ideal opportunity to take visitors behind the scenes. How are paintings hung, how are sculptures stored on shelves ahead of being polished for an exhibition?" wonders curator Mieke Mels. ‘This is perhaps only 1 per cent of what we have in storage, but it gives a nice picture.’
The largest hall in the Venetian Galleries is dominated by an art installation that makes one gasp. 'Plastic reef' by Maarten Vanden Eynde. It’s a conglomerated pile of plastic waste from the sea. A work that is being borrowed, worldwide, to kick people a conscience, Mu.ZEE points out.
Vanden Eynde examines the enormous plastic pollution in the oceans, especially plastic particles that destroy marine life and eventually end up back in our bodies.