Stefan Cools

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Exhibition 2011 July-September
"Parlant amb les pedres"
"Hablando con las piedras"
El Centre d'art i Sostenibilitat del Forn de la Calç
Calders, Spain

Stefan Cools Alma Mater

In this exhibition the work of Stefan Cools presents us with an ecological paradigm. Stefan's practice is focused around a peculiar 'meta-science' or 'metaphysical-theory' that takes into consideration the way life systems are interrelated and connected. This includes awareness of the origins of materials, the way objects and products are constructed and the physical and psychological purpose that art serves in the production of meaning.

What is the connection between an ecological paradigm and an artistic product? What is the relationship between the body, ecological and cultural space in this context? What can an artistic outcome communicate in this relationship? The historical development of the natural sciences has been to formally investigate disparate areas of study.

The study of specific physical and biological conditions in isolation had created a vast knowledge base but interconnections and relationships needed the consideration of a 'meta-science' that could bring to us a level of integrated understanding. Through the science of Ecology we now appreciate how scientific and technological advances might affect entire systems.

Ecology is the understanding of interrelated systems, both environmental and social, as such can be applied as a methodology to natural environment and artistic practices. The term 'ecology' is therefore not fixed as a singular definition and has different meanings across the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences as well as cultural and artistic interpretation.

Stefan's, Alma Mater suggests an Ecological paradigm for artistic practice with an awareness of broader systems in the production of artwork, the role of artistic practice in the environmental and social fabric and the methodology and ethics of its production and deployment.

As an interpretive construct Alma Mater is not a benign worldview but rather one that allows the flexibility of creative responses. A way of interpreting cultural identifiers through environmental and spatial relationships, rather than isolated occurrence and singular meanings or outcomes.

This represents a move away from 'objects' and towards 'relationships'. What it suggests for the individual artist is an awareness and practice of 'ecological-interest' rather than 'self-interest'. Stefan, seeking to interpret a human ecology, requires us to witness the labour of his body and the environment for which its representation depends. We often choose to represent the 'self' as the disembodied mind in the mind/body split of rationalist mechanistic discourses. However, Alma Mater is a paradox.

Stefan interprets the surfaces of the exhibition space as an environmental substrate. Materials and meanings are sequestered along its passages and like synaptic junctions between nerve cells, meaning is transmitted between gaps in our perception. This extends to the imagination of creativity in non-human animals, birds and insects. In the culturally mediated arena of the art museum Stefan elaborates this perceptual complexity. It is manifested through the imagined and implied. Evidence of any 'art' is a byproduct of his physical presence in this space.

Stefan's vision is an environment of spatial perceptions, mediated through Alma Mater as an extension of the human into imagined ecological relationships and perceptual resonances.

Russell Milledge
Lecture, School of creative Arts
James Cook University
29 May 2009

Where the seeds reach the earth, is where they will germinate

Stefan Cools

Cell art space 7 June - 5 July 2006

Cell art space presents yet another intriguing work, this time from Netherlands based artist Stefan Cools. Cool's practice centres on the relationship between humans, animals and vegetation and a world where all forms are equally important to each other. With a Masters in Floral Art, Cools' conceptual engagement with vegetation is inevitable.

This current installation explores the idea of transformation and the drive by artists to explore originality. According to the artist, this drive is present in a continuous feedback loop from art to artist and back again. This feedback continuum also carries transformations of instinct to intellect.

So we find in the centre of Cell art space rests nothing less than a collection of humble coconuts. Initially, they even seem comical, as the image of any natural form over exploited by tourism eventually becomes. In Cools' world though these have been raised to something quite special - symbols of both artist and the act of creation. An old, short ladder also sits in the centre, a number of white, vine-like electrical leads threaded into one of its rungs. Each of these stretch out over the floor to connect with a coconut.

What is this exchange between forms? Leaning on the wall behind the ladder, playing into the theatre of the space, a beam of wood seems charged by thin segments of gold leaf which evoke processes of divining or receiving. At the front of the space, is another separate component - a flat diagram attached to the glass wall connecting with thin white feeder threads, two slim cardboard boxes on the floor. Again the feeling is of transmission and of energy transformed.

The glass walls take an active role mediating inspirations from the world outside to the internal space of Cell and out again. In this exchange, where the material exerts an equally powerful influence on the artist, Cools' imagines the coconuts used returning to the soil, "where they will take root, and become artists themselves".

Susan Reid
Curator - Cairns Regional Gallery
June 2006

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