Isolation in the middle of cultured society. Or rather, within a curated set-up. This is what contemporary artist Nils Verkaeren is looking for with his performance '79HRS X 42M3' as part of the art route 'Kunst In Puurs'. By locking himself up for four days and three nights in a glass studio on the route, he and his act of painting become part of the well-considered selection of the artworks that curator Wilfried Cooreman putted together. Verkaeren engages in dialogue, but within the four walls of the glass booth. As a result, he is partially shielded from what is going on around him. An isolation that involves him but does not allow him to participate fully. An interesting construction, because Verkaeren 'can't resist anything except temptation'.



With this performance Verkaeren alludes to an essential theme in his oeuvre: isolation. In recent years he has undertaken distant solo painting projects into rural, remote landscapes that make painting practically impossible. Verkaeren had to resist nature and himself, which enabled him to expand his boundaries as an artist. For Verkaeren does not paint what he sees, he experiences what he paints. By locking himself up for 79 hours within 42 cubic meters elements and actions that he experiences as crucial within his painting process become impossible: no direct contact with nature, not living according to nature because there is 24 on 24 lighting and heating, no distance can be taken from the canvases, nature and himself find themselves in a certain framing and are no longer free.