PLAKT - Gerard Herman
Gerard Herman - Gevoel Gevoel
08.05.26 to 09.08.26 — Gerard Herman with Gevoel-Gevoel
The work by Gerard Herman in the PLAKT series, titled Gevoel-Gevoel, shows two men in conversation. The scene is simply constructed, with full attention on their body language and words. What initially feels light and familiar quickly becomes ambiguous: the sentence they exchange is both sincere and uncomfortable, naïve and performative. The work raises questions about how we speak and what we really mean. Is this an honest statement, or rather a subtle parody of managerial language in which emotions are often standardized? Herman deliberately leaves this question open, playing with the tension between sincerity and irony.
Gerard Herman (Ghent, 1989) works across drawing, printmaking, performance, animation, and sound. His visual language is simple and direct, yet filled with humor and estrangement. Through short sentences, lists, and text fragments, he explores the gap between language and meaning. His work embraces the unfinished and the imperfect: skewed lines and simple compositions are part of his strategy to challenge fixed ideas of quality and authority. Chance and experimentation play an important role throughout.
Art to the Rhythm of the City
With PLAKT, artlead, publisher of art editions and objects, invited twelve artists to create images in poster form. These prints emerged to the rhythm of the city: sometimes unnoticed, sometimes unexpectedly, appearing on walls, façades, fences and billboards across several Flemish cities and in Brussels.
As unpredictable as the appearance of these images is the collaboration with the artists. Valérian Goalec’s proposal was not an image, but a carrier: a steel wall sculpture inspired by the advertising frames encountered daily in the Paris metro. The impossibility of distributing these steel structures in public space led to the development of a second chapter of the PLAKT project.
At various cultural institutions located in the geographical periphery, where the posters had not previously appeared in the streetscape, this wall sculpture will function as a support for the prints of the other eleven artists. Here too, an element of unpredictability remains: each institution determines the order and duration of display.
At Abby, PLAKT can be found in the underpass near the museum garden.
The images for PLAKT were created by Céline Mathieu, Michel François, Camille Orso, Peter Downsbrough, Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei, Aline Bouvy, Geert Goiris, Tine Guns, Mekhitar Garabedian, Gerard Herman, and Katja Mater. The frame is a work by Valérian Goalec.
PLAKT is a project by artlead, in collaboration with IKOB, Eupen; CC Strombeek; De Warande, Turnhout; Kunsthal Mechelen; NW, Aalst; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle; Kapel De Rozenkrans, Koksijde; Abby, Kortrijk; and C-mine, Genk.
