Wilfried & Yannicke Cooreman present all you ever wanted at Lempertz

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The beautiful art-deco hall of auction house Lempertz is the stage for a small but immersive presentation of works from the collection of Wilfried & Yannicke Cooreman. Seven years after their big collection presentation at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, the collector-couple shares another part of their impressive collection.

The title of the exhibition, Quodlibet, is latin for “whatever you wish”. It also refers to a musical composition of the same name which combines several different melodies in counterpoint – harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm. Finally Quodlibet is also the title of a series of works by Lucy McKenzie, all trompe l’oeil paintings that present a collection of everyday items on a table or bulletin board.

One of the first works in the exhibition is McKenzie’s Quodlibet XXVII, which she made especially for the Cooremans, carefully collaging a number of important artifacts from their life: an exhibition catalogue of their previous collection presentation at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, a strap from a Coimbra cigar, old stationary, passport pictures of the young collectors, tokens referring to their professional careers, a small reference to a Laurence Weiner piece, etc.

Quodlibet is a beautiful metaphor for the couple’s collection; build by two passionate people with of genuine love for art – one coup de foudre at a time. Wilfried & Yannicke Cooreman are known for supporting and collecting young artists, often before or at the beginning of their international breakthrough. When they started collecting art in the late seventies, they focussed on artists from their own generation such as Thomas Schütte, Franz West and Martin Kippenberger. Over time, the focus shifted towards a younger generation with artists such as Simon Denny, Lucy McKenzie and Dahn Vo. From this perspective, it’s logical that their collection is very diverse and versatile, with no restrictions in terms of themes or imagery. What connects everyhting are two people, and a attitude towards collecting Mrs. Cooreman once described as “an intellectual necessity that can be alternately expressed as ‘food for the mind’”.

The works in the exhibition are selected and presented in close collaboration with Brussels-based artist Richard Venlet. In his practice, Venlet combines sculpture, art historical research, exhibition design and architecture to create ‘environments’. Working in context-specific situations, he has produced numerous installations that incorporate the work of other artists and collaborators, forming composite and circuitous environments that are often whimsical reconfigurations of architectural space.

For Quodlibet, the majestic hall of Lempertz is devided two diagonal walls with the same height as the original wood panelling of the room, dividing the open hall in four imaginary spaces. Throughout those spaces 24 works are presented in sometimes unusual ways, spanning almost 40 years of collecting.

With works by Simon Denny, Franz West, Gregor Schneider, Juan Munoz, Marcel Broodthaers, Ian Kiaer, Thomas Schütte, Michael Krebber, Lucy McKenzie, Victor Man, Wade Guyton, Art & Language, Jan Vercruysse, Martin Kippenberger, Andreas Slominski, Jos De Gruyter & Harald Thys, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Danh Vo, Jef Geys, and Matt Mullican.

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