Numbers - Signs -Words

 The present works of Agnes Maes are a significant moment in the identification process through which she is struggling for a distinctive position in the artistic scenery, especially in the art of painting. Although a women has no age, her time has arrived for an energetic self-assurance in the realm of art. In recent years she is directing her aims to the ordening of the composition and she also wants to give a sense to the components by providing them with symbolic imports. That composition was mostly complex, caused by the diversity of the many constituent elements. It was a period in which the expressive aspiration was overrun by the proliferation of the artistic imagination. On the other hand, symbols are not capable, just like that to turn forms and colours into quality: all they can assure is the enrichment of optimal plastic and colouristic elements.
 
Despite of the complexity, the plastic discourse of paintings and drawings was vigorous and clear. It went on like this, but the composition evolved positively to a greater simplicity, to a lesser visual commotion and aggression, but also to more synthetic images. For Agnes Maes, such an evolution resulted in great powerful signs. They substitute the figurative fragments of previous works. The primitive signs and the archetypical forms that henceforth dominate the image-making, can also be recognised in the wooden sculptures. In the paintings they are charged with human feelings, with ideas. As a sculpture, they acquire a rather poetic significance but preserve their monumental character. Sometimes words, formed from adhesive letters, appear in her works. Acting this way, the artist wants to give a distant character to the words. They contrast with the sensitive notation of image-making and image-significance. And so the artist has chosen the double word "caput mortuum" for the fascination it exerts on her and for the fact that the painting was in need of a plastic element to which the double word corresponded. Consequently the words fulfil diverse functions, that can change from painting to painting. They certainly are miles away from the meaning to the use of words by Magritte and Broodthaers. For Agnes Maes they are non corrosive - pervertive - relativizing - dubious - discursive. The very fact that a word picture is robust by making use of adhesive letters and that the meaning of words is unambiguous, conforms them to the solid formal language of the works. In fact the words appear in a simplification process of formal language, partly as a contrasting element that intercepts the former complexity, partly as an explanation of the image-symbolism. One can not imagine the function of words in a processing evolution to a more simplified grammar of forms. It's up to us to measure the results : the artist is forging his weapons.
 
K.J. Geirlandt

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