Beeldend kunstenaar Paul Van Dessel

Achterbuurt

×

Nachtelijk,
onder een uitgezaaide
sterrennevel,
gehuld
in onaanzienlijkheid,
de achterbuurt.

De straten lijken
verdwaald,
vergeten
en verloren haast.

Half vervallen portalen,
stil en duister,
spieden er heftig
naar sporen
van geluk.

Hersenspinsels,
gesponnen
uit diep gerijpte schaduwen,
worden er onthaald
door blaffende honden.

Lichtjes,
warmte
en vanuit groezelige kroegjes,
klaterend lachen:
ha ha ha !
Stilte...

‘Bonsoir monsieur! Entrez!’
‘Non, merçi.
Pas maintenant.’
Go-go girls flitsen
rood en blauw.

Auto’s razen voorbij,
de kasseien zinderen,
ze voeren
de gedachten mee ...

Schichtig
worden gordijnen
gesloten.
Heimelijk lampen ontloken.
Wees nu maar rustig.
Wees jezelf.
Een vreemde passeert...
en groet...

Zonder Eiffel toren

×

Afscheid genomen
van Monet bij de Nymphéas
en wat later van Marie Laurencin
in haar kamer waar
zij met scherpe en behoedzame blik
nog steeds haar eenzaam verlangen
naar tederheid tracht te beschermen.

Hij gaat verder, de dichte nevel
tegemoet.
Een zware nevel over Parijs
met haar Seine en de daarnaast
uitdijende vlakten
en gezwollen architectuur maar ...
zonder Eiffel toren.

Ergens op de grond liggen
verdorde herfstbladeren
met daarop kriskras verspreid,
groene stoeltjes,
verdwaasd en vereenzaamd,
haast ontredderd
wachtend op een afwezig publiek.

In de verte huppelen gouden paardjes
met ruiter.
Er spuit water uit een vergulde bokaal.
Er is nog hoop.

Hij bevindt zich tussen ver verwijderd
theatraal vertoon van autoverkeer,
doelloze wandelaars
en joggers die met hun borst
een muur van bezwaren
trachten voort te duwen.
Naast hem een kus
in eeuwige bronzen omhelzing.
Rodin!
Hij is dus toch niet alleen.

Vanaf de grens tussen verstilling
en energieke drukte, waar
stenen leeuwen de oneindigheid
trachten te bewaren,
begeeft hij zich langs een eindig pad,
onder bedwelming van motorgeluiden,
loeiende sirenes, gaslucht
en gestuurde mensenmassa’s
naar alweer een volgend museum
dat oplost in de mistige afwezigheid
van plaats en tijd ...

Silent friend

×

In a lawn of sensory stimuli
a stone man stares at his destination.
Caught by an alien silence
he goes after the future
while the present is escaping him.

He does not breathe,
nor has he an eye for color.
He is completely indifferent
to every weather change,
to every game of hide and seek.

On his head two flyes are making love,
so it seems anyway.
A photographer gives him digital eternity
while nearby a father tries to teach
his daughter the wonders of nature.

All this does not seem to bother him,
like itʼs going right past him.
That heʻs gradually being overgrown
with lush greenery does not disturb him at all.

Whether all this is only a pose
during the day
and that he might be coming out of the ground
and coming to life at night,
with a fishtale
to make his icy body juices flow
in the adjoining pond
at a nightly party with invisible spirits,
is merely a question.

A young pastor glistens by,
he has no message to this stubborn soul
who prefers to dig himself in
and only feeds on thoughts
that he makes up himself
and who for children is only
'Hello mister' climbing gear
or a silent friend to be on the picture with.

In a curdled philosophy
he tries to capture life
because itʼ s essence may not escape him.
But all he sees before him is his self-image
that invisibly ages in time,
thus sinking in cascade
in his botanical environment.
First to the loins, then to the neck
and so on
until he merges into a totaly unnoticed absence ...

Dance of Death

×

That chilly night
of emaciated lust.
Suddenly,
that silent scream
that no eye can see,
nor any ear can hear.

Mortification hides in your eyes,
it scorches the being that I am
and want to become.

I feel about with my hands
in the hollowness of your darkness
that fills me with illusion.
My passion melts like lava in the pores
of your degenaration.

You smashed the moonlight into pieces
when I was blinded by your appearance.
Her shards burn tunnels of destruction
in my reckless emotional surrender.
The closer you get
the more your icy cold burns me.

You havenʼt even achieved the fullness
of your powers to let them dance
to the rhythm of madness,
a dance of death.

In your uterus necks the cells celebrate
a feast of complacency.
Your heart crawls on a bed of wrath
and plunges me into the catacombs of hell.

With no land I try to find my way back,
without direction I try to regain my balance.
I lost my laughter.
Unbound from my fantasms
I try to silence myself
while spitting out
your perverse saliva.

Left alone I am chained,
that is the imperative,
now that only distant voices lure me back.
From an infinite silence I can hear them again.
They dance and dance and dance,
another dance, on a different rhythm.
To hear them is to recognize them,
is to ... acknowledge them.

To acknowledge them is to welcome them
with an animal like screaming
because of the joy that returned.
Softly they caress the wounds,
get me out of the weathered craters of your lap.

How far can you dance the dance of death ?

Embrace

×

Thereʼs no permanent peace in nature.
Throw those I-phones and PCs in the corner
and pull out.
How long do you think you can stay in the mountains,
or in the woods or by the sea ?

You will be grabbed by the throat,
your peace will be undone.
Those who become rigid will pine away.
You will sink into a grimly world of murders.

She knows no pity, this beautiful appearance.
On the loose she goes berserk
and will always have the last word.
Throw it on an agreement with her,
there is no alternative. Recognize her power.
She also exsists in you, so ... you better love her,
but do not forget her rules and laws
or you will perish along.

She is your joy and your suffering.
Makes you drunk by frenziedness,
makes you drunk by desperation.
She will only listen to you
if she deems you worthy
while continuing her will.

Give her what she needs, what she longs for,
what she craves. Control and meaning.
Be the captain, the forester, the mountaineer.
But do not try to change her character,
it will destroy you and lead you to nothing.
Orphaned, she will stay behind and exist in herself
but she will maintain all the same.

Sheʼll turn you into an human being
only if you show respect. Do not condemn her,
she knows no responsibility, only her own identity.
She wastes herself on a regular basis to be reborn
in the paradise of killing, repressing and conspiring.
That is the inexorable symphony that
has been composed for her.

Embrace her but not for too long
because venomously you will be stung
and that is only the least of dangers.
And if you want to deprive her of her selfishness,
if you have to offer her something sensible,
then honor her self-awareness and
she will in turn follow you willingly
to rise to a higher consciousness with you ...

Feature

×

Belonging to eternity
in nature’s temple,
aging doesn’t seem to catch up on him.
It’ s his infallible will
to preserve his childhood innocense.

A pure existense
is what he is striving after.
Being freed from the pollution that
has already ruined so many of us.

But deep within he knows :
all by himself he is unable.
Thus, as a master of fire,
he has created in bronze
two oblong and narrow windinstruments,
keeping them between his curved lips
and chubby cheeks,
incessantly pointing them
towards the heavens.

Though his head may seem unfull-grown
and his body insignificant and lowly,
his chest, as a feature of sincerity,
along with his desire, appears gigantic.
Therefore, listen very closely ...
try and find the enticing voice of his soul ...
it’s a long-drawn, sustained pastoral tone.

This young person’s bronze body
twists and turns,
adapts dexterously to a somewhat
surprisingly prismatic figure.
Handsomely squatting,
in position on a triangular socle,
he cheerfully peers round about
with a square glance, totaly infatuated.
And ignorant, as he is,
to where he might find happiness,
you can hear him think ...
‘With this sound I’ll surely manage.’
So, his torso constantly functions as a radar.

The environment coincides.
The trees and the sky, the grasses and
the shrubs and all it’s denizens.
With faith and patience, they listen while
enjoying his attention.

But attention also comes to him
when looked at or photographed.
In many computerfiles his image thrones,
his spirit remaining immune and unassailable.
Some even adress or touch him.
Yet who confronts him ?

Maybe now’s the time to descend the socle
and to put the flutes at rest.
Maybe then things will start changing
to end his quest, to finally become real.
I’d approve without any doubt
but then again would overmuch miss him
here in the park ...
and above all his artistic presence ...

Bruegel Revisited

×

They are streamlined in an introverted
collectively orchestrated concourse.
With uniforms on as if to depict illusions
of security and equality.
Virtually connected with each other
through a cleverly conceived 'virtual reality casque'
that makes even the winged Hermes blink an eye
or through a wire or any other inventive
wirelessly controlled system that has
become to them a safe-in-the-herd surrogate.

Carrying along and pushing away one another,
they stumble however over reality, out of selfishness,
trampling life and its symbols.

"How to get out of here ?"
Someone gestures in the thin
and sees a dog appear in this twilight zone,
a disguised god warning, inclined to intervene.

Nature goes into protest and the world becomes
an absurdist, dilapidated theater.
Her roof collapses and hangs desperately against
the disordered earth,
a technological spiderweb as it is in which people
eventually will become entangled.
Helplessly they now extend their arms to a nearby
that is however still vague and unprecedented familiar,
wanting to return to the core of their existence
as obscured newly borns disturbed in their divinity.

'The higher the need, the nearer the salvation.'
as the sages say.
When one goes through hopelessness
caused by faith in his own fabrications, one will,
sooner or later, be forced to put an eye on it.
to disentangle its fiction.

Because now independent input is needed,
creativity required !
Only the essential resources will be provided.
Means that were always present
but were denied all of the time
out of blindness to life and their ownself.

Finally, after yet another hell journey
and alluding to their gifts and solidarity,
these means reappear ... in the unshakable light
that they had so carefully concealed
because it was too confrontational.
Now it is up to themselves again
to re-record that all-important thread !

A Winter Story

×

Misty the tight seascape cherishes
your inner world.

You just walked across the dike,
feeling slightly down,
secretly enjoying the grace of being here.

But soon the torment disappeares.
Returning to the elements
you are open again to the purifying winter wind;
a salty taste is now put on your lips,
the power of minerals.

From a steel frame that refers
to the religious metaphor painting
of the 15th century Van Eyck brothers
symbolising Christ as a lamb,
an exemplary believer,
the invisible "Lamb of God",
stares from the beach and says
in an incalculable sound
that it is good that you came,
irresistibly absorbed as you are
to the core of nature.

A 'Grand Café' in a former palace
that masks and displays simultaneously
a glorious yet dubious past
lures you inside
under the insistence of the cold
for a safe sight at sea ...
for a direct confrontation with the steel frame.

Someone in a white waiters coat,
with black and gold embroidered epaulettes,
harmoniously contrasting with the gray interior,
takes your order : a drink of which
you hope it will warm you.
Here one keeps to the surface however,
here everything has itʼs price but that
you already knew the moment you stepped in.

A bit further up sits a gentleman,
immersed in some magazine,
a 'lait Russe' within reach.
You do not ask him questions
but you act just like him.
Being yourself among the others,
to commit and muse yourself,
to bring everything back into balance.

Each has his own balance
and his own resources for it.

An old, somewhat shadowy man
suddenly appears in front of the window.
It seems as if his appearance frightens
the room palms, but perhaps
it is just the memory of cold
that he evokes in you.
You wonder now where his thoughts lead him to,
although this doesnʼt matter
in this sheltered environment.
The question being more fascinating than the answer
in a timeless framework
where fantasy claims its full rights.

And so The "Lamb of God" demands attention again
by spreading a silky soft, enigmatic light
over the tavern furniture from a distant mystique
to emphasize that it is good though that you came ...

Another Dimension

×

'The singing water', an accompanying sign says.
It goes with a poem that gloryfies
this pumped up water
that rattles down along an imposed road
to make believe that all is eternal ...

In addition to improvised rocks,
thereʼs a wintering Bonsai,
and a pool, fringed with lead,
in which the late winter sun
shows her reflection,
as if to indicate that sheʻs far from dismissed
and, in exchange for the obtained favor
to be allowed to appear again,
encourages the fish present
with her last rays of the day.

The fish, petrified statues in this icy pool,
stare at the water that flows them from the rocks
and overwhelms them with oxygen and hope.
Hope for a lasting future.

Although ? Do fish have a sense of evolution ?
Can fish muse about their own existence ?
Now that they have so little space to do anything else ?
Or are they so wise and accomplished
that they have to be fish only, in the here and now ?

To appear, in their turn, instructively,
in a distant and humble mirror,
to careless walkers.
In an ornamental garden where they
traditionally have been part
of the human world.

Maybe they inhabit another dimension
where no human has ever come.
Not even a black bird with an eye for food
in this withered garden ...

Suddenly he awakes from his projection,
away from this microcosm,
and he sees, in the near background,
the city and its inhabitants rising up again ...

Two worlds coinciding

×

Notre propre existence et celle du monde envirronant.

ʻTwo figures reclining on a Calder base.ʼ
Une sculpture bleu ciel bleu par Peter Rogiers
au parc Middelheim
se démarque parmis des bronzes foncées.

Deux formes humaines tordues sur un socle
en acier industriel qui faisaient partie
dʼun ʻstabelʼ ou ʻmobileʼ dʼAlexander Calder.
Leurs aspirations tourmentées
vers une expansion individuelle
dans un monde dʼabstraction
appartiennent à une tourmente éternelle.
Ils gémissent et se fient à la quintessence qui
les unit avec un piédestal retenu,
soutenant fermement sur une terre plus virginale
que la viridité des herbes.

Malgré la souffrance évoquée par ces figures,
lʼimage rayonne tranquilité, positivité même.
Parce que le créateur et les spectateurs
se trouvent à distance
la relativité conduit à la beauté.

Une certaine clarté est accordé à ces formes ténébreuses
qui roulent et tournent et tentent de se modèler sans cesse.
Mais, tout juste pas mises lʼenvers à lʼendroit,
ils reviennent toujours aux régularités de la vie.
Soutenues, consciemment inconsciemment,
par une force dʼévolution laissant espace
à la créativité,
à lʼindépendance
et à la responsabilité.

Ils sont aussi remplies de question.
Sur leur identité,
leur place
et leur sens.
Au même temps ils donnent lʼimpression
que rien nʼa dʼimportance.
Tant quʼil y a mouvement dans une donné terrestre
il y a de lʼespoir et de la satisfaction.

On nʼa pas dʼautre choix que de se laisser aller dans
ce flux centrifuge, dans cette recherche extatique et paranoïque
pendant lequel vous risquez de vous perdre
chaque fois que vous revenez à l'essence.
Il nʼy a pas dʼautre choix que dʼaimer ces figures remarquables ... ,
que dʼaimer ce statue comme une mer bleu azur ...

Oog van de passie

×

Als door het oog van de naald
poog je te kruipen
door het brandend oog
dat je vanuit de tijdloosheid aanstaart,
om te achterhalen
wat er schuilt
daar waar je fysiek niet komen kunt.

Een vurige zonnegod die verblindt
als je hem te lang aankijkt
en beheerst gebiedt
hem langs een andere weg te benaderen.

De afstand die er eigenlijk niet is
en verbindt wat één is,
over een zee van tijd heen,
prikkelt je zinnen
en je niet aflatende hunkering naar
het willen opgaan in alles
en het tegelijk vinden van zichzelf.

Een wederzijds gluren,
een schromelijk doorgronden van mekaar
terwijl de golven als engelenhaar, zinnelijk diep
in en uit ademend op je ziel,
aantrekken en afstoten,
je, opzwellend, inslikken,
je, ontzwellend, weer uitspugen.

Een niet aflatende beweging
tot het punt
waar je halt houden moet
om plaats te maken
voor geloof en vertrouwen ...
of voor nieuwsgierigheid en achterdocht.
Althans, zolang je gefocust blijft,
zolang je in het leven bent ...

hier op dit verlaten strand
waar je huid
verzinkt in het zilte zand
en haar avondlijke kilte zich mengt
met je gepassioneerd verlangen
naar eeuwige warmte en vervulling
om de volheid en de leegte
te leren proeven ...
om de eenzaamheid
en de gemeenzaamheid
te leren trotseren ...

Geconserveerde liefde

×

Eerst was er enkel ik
De ruimte reflecteerde wie ik was
maar stilaan gaf ze haar geheimen prijs
en werd je er deel van

In de voren van mijn bastion
verschenen zoete voorwerpen
Herinneringen die je telkens achterliet
als je er zijn kon

Want altijd was je er niet
Dit gebood het noodlot
maar dat beseften we toen niet

Een parfum flesje dat zijn passie
langzaamaan verdampte in het ijle
werd symbool van intense eigenheid
Sensueel en toegewijd was je
In een schelp luisterde ik naar je afwezigheid
en begon ik mijn zoektocht

De herinneringen stapelden zich op
en werden geconserveerd
in betekenisloze spullen

Een laatste kaars die nooit
werd ontbloot en ontbrand
Een doos die voor altijd gesloten bleef
Een verbrijzelde eischaal die haar
dooier reeds aan de kunstschilder gegeven had
Een maquillage borstel om nooit
meer gebruikt te worden

Ik trachtte zin te geven
aan wat je sprakeloos vertegenwoordigde
en verhief het tot iconen van weemoed
en verlangen

Een lint dat vergeefs op een nieuw geschenk wachtte
Een zandloper die kantelde
en zo de tijd bevroor
Een kleine puntige maar evenzo verlaten schelp
Een geledigd glas dat vervaagde
achter een raster van gestolde schilderslijm

In hun eigen wereld bleven ze gevangen
Nooit ... nooit
versmolten ze echt met de ruimte
en toen was er in deze Mondriaanse matrix
weer nog enkel ik ...

Cross-roads

×

Ornamented is the frame, old school, painted in ‘trompe l’oeuil’.
It integrates in a frozen yet not hermetic picture.
Through it we see an artist placed in the center of a mirror,
stately and ready before the easel.

The canvas before him is still maiden.
It isn’t quite clear where he is focussing on.
Nevertheless, it ‘s not so much about what he sees
as well as what he experiences in this mondane interior
in which he could have in no way landed by accident.
He’s rolling in archly hidden intensity and
his glance is pointed at what could be an uncertain future.

Surrounded is he by likewise isolated chairs and tables,
standing out amongst empty walls ...
A natural still life - a vase with flowers, a box-tree,
a candle waiting to be lit - pointing out what isn’t there.
Without depending upon the artist, this life is an unset table.

He reflects now his own death, this true and trusted companion,
in another mirror behind him, to weigh his temporal and fragile life.
A skelleton hereby suddenly appears in parallel worlds, self-assured
and grinning as if to challenge.

How can he play his part in this world, beyond time, beyond death even ... ?
No, not out of vanity, for sure, but to continue what is nobel and pure,
to connect the living. Priest wise.

A curtain, a clerical garb soaked in Cerulean blue,
able to cover up this symbolical scene any moment in mystery,
affably covers up the artist’s aims in her folds,
showing them only with accuracy and care.

In this intermediate zone all phenomena cross one another.
Time and timelessness, observation and being under it,
presence and absence, sound and silince,
consciousness and ignorance, light and darkness, ...
It is the absolute zero, the absolute startingpoint to which
everything returns.
It’s the source or creativeness nailed upon the artist,
keeper of the cross-roads of existence.

Achterbuurt

Hoezo vreemd ?

Levenskern

Lokroep

Maan

Schelp

Sneeuwland

Zonder Eiffel toren

Beeldspiegel

Geen dichter

Zoals toen

Let me

Silent friend

Dance of Death

Secret Spring (part 2 of a triptich)

Embrace

Feature

Bruegel Revisited

A Winter Story

Soul Train

Another Dimension

Two worlds coinciding

Oog van de passie

Wachter

Geconserveerde liefde

Hallucinatie (‘Enthauptung’)

Cross-roads

Partners

Gesloten ogen

Geen afscheid

Secret Spring
(part 2 of a triptich)