For War and Peace

For the PUNCH. evening at museum De Pont on 16 January 2025, cultural partner DansBrabant invited creator/performer Anthony van Gog. With For War and Peace, a performance for ten figures, and a special sound installation, he responds to the current exhibition War and Peace: A Poetics of Gesture By Beatriz González.

Beatriz González is the grande dame of contemporary South American art. War and Peace: A Poetics of Gesture provides an overview of her impressive oeuvre while offering a new perspective on her approach to figures and gestures as carriers of emotion. González's work has a distinctly political-social slant. The black silhouettes in her work are an indictment; they are archetypal metaphors for violence, suffering and domination.

Maker/performer Anthony van Gog explores in his work the theme of 'selflessness', the idea that our identity is formed primarily by mirroring ourselves on the outside world. Whereas in previous performances he emphasised the materiality of the body (the bones and intestines), for this PUNCH. evening he focuses mainly on the contour, on the dark silhouette. A figure that is at once recognisable and stripped of personality, on which to project and which at the same time absorbs everything.

González and Van Gog search, each in their own way, by different means and from different backgrounds, for the dark and unpleasant.

Sound artist Max Frimout closes the evening. Using a modular synthesiser, he gives his own response to González's work.