Correspondances #2

Letters from and to Ronny Delrue: an ode to slowness

“What is more beautiful than the circle left on a piece of paper by a coffee cup, even if an algorithm can produce a lifelike imitation? What is even lovelier is the artists’ ideas, the exchange, the noise, the geographical and cultural differences, the slowness, the simplicity, the banality, the trace, the moment, the text, the language, the distance, the ideas, the powerlessness.”

— Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director S.M.A.K., Ghent

In recent years, Ronny Delrue (b. 1957) corresponded with the following five artists: Martin Assig (Germany), Salam Atta Sabri (Iraq), Roger Ballen (South Africa), Sanjeev Maharjan (Nepal), Mithu Sen (India) and Christine Remacle (Belgium).

Through exchanges in the form of drawings, letter fragments and collages, among other things, this publication not only explores the encounters between artists with different geographical backgrounds and cultural attitudes; it also looks at Delrue’s own oeuvre from a new angle. Ronny Delrue is a painter, but first and foremost an artist for whom drawing is a core activity. For him, drawing is a way of thinking, a state of being. For this project a conscious decision was made to send the letters by post, as opposed to the swift exchange of digitally scanned documents. Correspondances #2 is an ode to slowness and a tribute to human acts, in which representation becomes the language of the encounter.

Texts by Ory Dessau, Carine Fol and Philippe Van Cauteren.

Book published on the occasion of Correspondances – Ronny Delrue in dialogue at S.M.A.K., Ghent (26.10.2019 until 19.01.2020) and Roger Ballen – Ronny Delrue at CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels (14.11.2019 until 14.03.2020).