The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

Loreta Visic

°1976
Born in , HR
Lives in , NL

Loreta Visic (°1976) was born in Croatia, but moved to the Netherlands as a child. After her studies at the Academy for Visual Arts in Maastricht, she obtained her MA from Antwerp’s Higher Institute for Fine Arts. During this period she also took part in different artist-in-residence programs.

Visic works in a subtle way, handling the balance and the connection between the familiar and the strange, the known and the unknown. The apparently tame and pretty atmosphere of 'domesticity' draws the viewer into the psychological spaces of personal intimacy, vulnerability and security. But the innocent-appearing objects of comfort and safety lead to a state of dramatic tension when their seeming calm is interrupted by our own acts of disturbing recognition. Visic is an artist with a marked degree of sensibility and a self-reflexive approach to her artistic practice.

The starting-point for her oeuvre is the mobile and changeable aspects of place, and this leads to a series of thoughtful expressions investigating notions like home, domesticity and belonging. She connects these to subjects like personal space, intimacy, security, religion and culture. Visic inquires into these questions in their most obvious manifestations. She combines a painstaking use of techniques and materials to create stories that are at once convincing and unsettling. Her art is very plastic, figurative, even scenographic.