Hans Op de Beeck: Drifting

For his first solo museum show in Shanghai, Hans Op de Beeck created a whole consisting of two major parts: a projection room and a classic drawing room like space. In the projection room his new animated film 'Vanishing Point' (2023-’24) will be on view, and in the drawing room he presents a mixture of recent sculptures and watercolour paintings.

For the artist, the exhibition’s title 'Drifting' refers to the feeling of floating, both mentally as well as physically. It also refers to the surrender to something greater, to fate, to the elements, to what cannot be controlled. Furthermore, someone or someone's attention can also drift off aimlessly, involuntarily to other places, sometimes described as daydreaming.

Op de Beeck associates drifting with sleep and the world of the dream and letting go of the real world. Ultimately, drifting also refers to transition and death. Sleeping and dreaming are conditions that frequently recur in the artist’s work, but rather than supporting their presence with psychoanalytic readings, they encourage the audience to submit to their own dreams through the imagination.