Dirk Zoete

In his drawings, Dirk Zoete (1969) shows theatrical stages with buildings or ships on them. These constructions contain several floors upon which houses, objects and people have been placed, that seem to be part of a system. The human figures are depicted in a rudimentary manner, like dolls or large scarecrows, looking at the world from an observation post. The architectural inventions and Ark-like ships appear to be gargantuan, but are at the same time endearingly reduced in size by the theatre-like setting. Sometimes the stage setting is explicit, as in The Wild Bunch in which cowboys are placed on wooden horses against an American desert landscape backdrop or even two men in a rowing boat at sea that on second glance turns out to be a stage set.

The system of houses, paddle wheels, barns, people and animals that can be seen in most works, points to a desire for a simple, coherent world in which man is self-sufficient. Dirk Zoete also elaborated on this theme in a scale-model of a circular house that simultaneously serves as studio, home and farm; the ideal place for an artist to live an autarkical life. In other drawings the theatrical dominates, with harlequin like figures acting on a stage or a parade of wagons moving through the image. There is a reference to costumes of the Bauhaus and the constructivists but also to the carnivalesque and grotesque that has such a strong tradition in Belgium with artists like James Ensor and Felicien Rops.

www.dirkzoete.be