To Find Other Solutions Than Those Planned, a project by Luca Bertolo (IT. 1968) conceived as a dialogue with the late Philippe Vandenberg (1952-2009). Centred on Vandenberg’s (Pour trouver d’autres solutions que prévues prions la Madonne de Molenbeek), the booth extends a conversation across time; between two artists who share a language of doubt, resistance, and renewal.
I discovered the work of Philippe Vandenberg about ten years ago, thanks to an artist friend. Even though I first saw his paintings only in reproduction, I was struck by many of them, especially his later works, in which painting seems to be reduced to a particular form of writing. I sensed a special energy in all of them, whatever the period. At my age, I think I can recognise a very delicate soul sinking into a sombre humanism. I’m afraid artists and poets excel, statistically, in this speciality.
“To find other solutions than those planned, let us pray to Our Lady of Molenbeek,” reads one of Philippe’s late works. Well, I thought, this might be a way to keep hoping. Out there, hundreds of thousands of people keep killing each other. We all want peace, don’t we? Belgians, Italians, Germans, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Russians, everybody is always right. We ask for more billions to be spent on drones! Personally, I’ve already asked more than once for the climate to graciously stop changing.
In short, I felt a certain resonance with old Philippe. “For him,” one of his children once said in an interview, “style was completely irrelevant. In his career, he would take a motif, work on it, and once he felt he had become immobile, he destroyed it and started again.” When I began thinking of using one of Philippe’s works as a poetic programme for the booth, I realised I am now fifty-seven, the very age when Philippe decided to stop changing and let himself become immobile.
“The beginning assaults us,” wrote the Italian poet Milo De Angelis. Changing looks easy, freedom looks easy. In fact, both are neither easy nor difficult.
Although I never met Philippe, I did meet Walter Swennen, who has by now also landed somewhere up there in painter’s heaven. We drank tea in his studio, such a great artist, and an exquisite person. At one point, old Walter asked if I used acrylics. “Not so much,” I said. “Neither do I,” he replied. “Acrylics are only good for painting pictures you already know in advance.”
Luca Bertolo, Pietrasanta, IT, October 2025
