Het oude verhaal van vlees en woord

Abstract

The work of Peter Verhelst is often described in physical terms. Verhelst indeed constantly refers to a plastic culture through quotations that can be content- as well as form-related. Still, Verhelst counteracts the supposed plasticity or physicality of his work with complex, sometimes far-fetched structures. In this text, I argue that there is an ambiguous interaction in Verhelst's work between language and image: these two notions act as two antipoles, both attracting and repelling one another.