Inspiration

The whole world comes together in Annouk Thys's ceramic installations.

An inhospitable moonscape, a burning spring on porous soil or the wrinkled lines of a bark are possible representations of her more abstract visual language. In years of research, she brings together coincidence and passage of time, stratification and diversity.
She preserves inner landscapes, as it were, full of fire and expectation. 

In the development of the fine ceramic works on the wall or the grand installations on the floor, the balancing act between control and experiment is equally intense. Annouk shows things as they were, are or will be. She perceives, as it were, the metamorphosis between indestructibility and fragility, hard and fragile, durable and finite.

Her ceramic works have become almost paintings, where the panel or tile are merely prompts to seek out the third dimension in the exhibition space. Different layers are exposed, seeming to break or crack, forming a skin, a mould or a palette of colour.
Shades of blue, green, red or yellow... even the white is not purely and simply white.

With Annouk Thys, a world is constantly changing, where sometimes we lose something and sometimes we can keep everything. 

Annouk herself sees the tile as an in-between, that which seems to connect us but also creates distance from our surroundings.

Technique

Annouk Thys collects raw materials, from found tiles to carefully selected types of clay, and meticulously determines the recipes of the materials brought together. Once each work begins to dry, outside through wind and weather or in the flames of a kiln, what happens is what happens. Circumstances, impurities, degree of drying or humidity, colour pigments or chemical surprises, create a transformation of their own.

Everything moves as the material itself indicates or wants: the still invisible smouldering organisms come to life.
The process of change stops the moment the artist himself decides to bring an image to life.

From : Slightly inflammable - Els Wuyts , May 2021
On the visual work of Debby Huysmans, Maaike Leyn and Annouk Thys.

Els Wuyts is an art connoisseur, organiser of art events and art tours.  She is the curator of Beaufort 2024, a triennial exhibition along the sea dykes, beaches and dunes of the Belgian coastline.