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Hans Op De Beeck

The Girl

Film expérimental | hdv | couleur | 16:0 | Belgique | 2017

"The Girl" is a slow, suggestive, perception-oriented animated film in which the viewer is transported to the strange world of a silent, 14-year-old girl. The dreamy landscape images show a dark forest, a vast landfill, a gas station, a highway landscape, a meadow, a factory site and a mysterious lake. Amidst all this stands an old caravan. The scene seems to suggest that the protagonist leads a lonely life on these premises. For a further unspecified reason, she must at one time have left her parental home, which is presented to us at the beginning of the film, both in perfect condition, and later in a neglected, abandoned state. In a variety of different landscapes, we see the girl perform small acts such as gather usable waste or pick herbs. We often get to see her cargo bike; the vehicle she uses to gather the bear necessities in order to survive. Nighttime, breaking dawn, wind, rain, fog, cold and warming fire are present throughout the film. Occasionally, we get to see the girl “resting serenely” from up close, as if we were right beside her, and could feel her breath. At the end of the film we understand that she is resting on a raft in the lake, floating, passive, as a metaphor for surrender. An original soundtrack for the film was composed by Tom Pintens, on a text by the artist.

Hans Op de Beeck produces large installations, sculptures, films, drawings, paintings, photographs and texts. His work is a reflection on our complex society and the universal questions of meaning and mortality that resonate within it. He regards man as a being who stages the world around him in a tragi-comic way. Above all, Op de Beeck is keen to stimulate the viewer’s senses, and invite them to really experience the image. He seeks to create a form of visual fiction that delivers a moment of wonder and silence. Over the past twenty years Op de Beeck realized numerous monumental “ sensorial ” installations, in which he evoked what he describes as “ visual fictions ”: tactile deserted spaces as an empty set for the viewer to walk through or sit down in, sculpted havens for introspection. In many of his films though, in contrast with those depopulated spaces, he prominently depicts anonymous characters. Hans Op de Beeck was born in Turnhout in 1969. He lives and works in Brussels and Gooik, Belgium. Op de Beeck has shown his work extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world.