Shape

Shape (2023) by Berend Strik addresses one of the most fundamental elements of visual art — the shape, the contour, the boundary that defines a form against its background.

Strik's work involves adding shapes — pieces of fabric, zones of stitching — to photographs, thereby creating new shapes within the image. These added shapes interact with the shapes already present in the photograph, creating a visual conversation between original and added forms.

Shape is also a philosophical concept: the form that matter takes, the structure that distinguishes one thing from another. Strik's practice of layering shapes — physical fabric on photographic surface — literalizes this philosophical investigation into form.

A single-word title like "Shape" invites the viewer to look at the work purely in terms of its formal properties: the shapes within it, their relationships, their movements across the surface.

Sources: Galerie Fons Welters