(con)textual. What do we really read?

Within the framework of he Onomatopee project ´By Method of Reasoning´ Rudi Laermans, a critical sociologist, described how the visual can´t express itself without a textual frame. Without text and explanation, the visual form would be limited in its communicative reach. This also holds the other way round, as Onomatopee demonstrated with Jack Segbars´ project ‘Rondom’: the textual form also has its own sphere of display.

Eindhoven-based artist Anne Dijkstra and Rotterdam-based artist Peter Koole both create ‘flat works’ such as drawings and paintings, in which they relate visual documentation to inter-textual, autonomous reconfigurations. By operating through textual deconstruction and exploring the connotative area(s) between original truth and subjective truth, these artists visually question our reading of acceptable literary anchor points such as daily news items (Koole) and classic literature (Dijkstra). By using what could almost be considered design typologies, they de- and reconstruct this framework. These statements enable them to (open up the possibility to) engage in an ethical debate concerning our reception of the visual: what do we really read?