Encounter with Benoît van Innis

For the redevelopment of the Central Square in Deinze (a project in collaboration with Marie-José Van Hee architecten), artist Benoît van Innis (°1960) worked out four seasons that were translated into four colour squares. It is an integration of art that refers to the painters of the Lys region and their favourite theme: the seasons. Emile Claus for instance painted his seasons somewhere in Deinze, at the end of the nineteenth century. Today, spring, summer, autumn and winter can be read on the Central Square of Deinze in the form of a green, orange, red and white colour field. The renewed square can be seen as one mineral plain, going from façade to façade, from the Lys to the Schipdonk Canal. With his colour scheme and language of forms, Van Innis knew exactly how to respond to the different places. The coloured squares have become a remedy for the monotonous, grey image of an average central square and they reintroduce a sense of proportion into the elongated, urban space. His integration manages to generate a certain order, as it were.