2017-03-09

FIC123 NEW WEBSITE


We are currently migrating from our old site to the new site.
We will stop posting on the old blogs for a few days, so be sure to update your bookmarks and join us on this new site. One central stop for all your cultural info in Belgium, Europe and the USA.
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2017-03-08

6663 - 20170415 - Albert Baronian - Brussel - Sbake Driver & Patrick Carpentier - 17.03.2017-15.04.2017

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Albert Baronian
Address
Rue Isidore Verheyden 2
1050 Brussel
 
Opening hours
Tuesday up until Saturday  12h - 18h
 
 
 

6662 - 20170429 - Galerie Valerie Bach - Brussel - Lucy+Jorge Orta - 17.03.2017-29.04.2017

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© Lucy+Jorge Orta - « Untitled », 2016, Assemblage painting on wood, ladder, life ring, aluminium bars, window frames, resin - 520 x 230 cm
 
LUCY+JORE ORTA

Valérie Bach gallery presents the second solo show by Lucy+Jorge Orta in Brussels.

The artists present two series of works, brought together for the first time, uniting three-dimensional works with paintings in order to shed light their creative process.

The first section of the exhibition is based the cell: the cell of life, the residential cell, the prison cell, etc. Forms and volumes made of hand-blown glass represent various aspects of our biological universe. In the series entitled « Totipotent », Lucy + Jorge Orta refer to the monumental architectonical structure, the evident formula, the key element in the development of cells. This force, this « full potential » (« Totipentency ») of a cell is an ever-growing powerful virtual energy, that can only come to its end under certain conditions.

This series on cells, source of hope and dynamism, portend the second part the exhibition, based on Jorge's pictorial work in 1970s, when painting was his way of escaping the overwhelming Argentine dictatorship, and in which the exhibited works explore the idea of the accident as both a violent moment but also as a random, uncontrolled phenomenon. In the series « Derrame » - Spanish for overflow, leak, spill, or attack (of the brain) - Lucy + Jorge Orta infused these meanings into intense, colourful, flat hemorrhages. These accidents become both the essential composition and the subject matter of the painting.

These artworks are based on the uncontrolled, similar to the action of cellular duplication. Driven by their own necessity - frustrating for the artists who lose control – they are followed by the artists' latest creations grouped under the name « Assemblages ». The series comprises three-dimensional works, whose chaotic arrays and juxtapositions of colour and collages of "formal reality" on the pictorial surface: stretcher bars, life-buoys, window frames resemble an accident.

This exhibition is therefore a synthesis of the couple's creative energy and their relation to the world through their scholarly search, exploring doubt and balance against a background of vital and infinite breath.
Constantin Chariot

Lucy and Jorge Orta co-founded Studio Orta in 1992. They now work under the co-authorship Lucy + Jorge Orta.
The artists' collaborative practice focuses on social and ecological issues, employing a diversity of media – sculpture, installation, couture, painting, silkscreen, photography, video, drawing, light and performance – to realize major bodies of work. Orta's artwork has been the focus of important survey exhibitions, including: The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005); Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice Biennale (2005); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); Biennial of the End of the World, Ushuaia, Antarctic Peninsula (2007); Hangar Bicocca spazio d'arte, Milan (2008); Natural History Museum, London (2010); MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome and Shanghai Biennale (2012); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2013); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca and Parc de la Villette, Paris (2014); London Museum Ontario (2015); Peterborough City Museum (2016).
In recognition of their contribution to sustainability, the artists received the Green Leaf Award (2007) for artistic excellence with an environmental message, presented by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Lucy Orta was born in 1966 in the UK. After studying fashion-knitwear design she debuted her artistic career with Jorge in Paris in 1991. In 2002, she co-founded the pioneer Master programme Man & Humanity, promoting social and sustainable design at the Design Academy of Eindhoven. She is currently professor and Chair of Art and the Environment at the London University of the Arts.

Jorge Orta was born in 1953 in Argentina and studied simultaneously at the Fine-Arts (1972-1979) and Architecture (1973- 1980) Faculties of the Universidad Nacional of Rosario. He moved to France in 1984 receiving a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign and European affairs to pursue a D.E.A. (Diplôme d'études approfondies) at the Sorbonne in Paris.

In 1999, Lucy + Jorge Orta established their studios in Seine-et-Marne and founded their research complex, Les Moulins in 2011.


Galerie Valerie Bach
Address
Rue Veydt 15
1060 Brussel
 
Opening hours
Tuesday up until Saturday  11h-13h & 14h-19h
 
 

6661 - 20170408 - Dauwens & Beernaert Gallery - Brussel - “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. - 09.03.2017-08.04.2017

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 “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
 
LOIC VAN ZEEBROEK & MAXIM FRANK


The exhibition is an encounter of paintings of Loïc Van Zeebroek (°1994) and sculptures of Maxim Frank (°1985). The exhibition title is derived from the probably most quoted phrase of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. Speaking about (essential) things beyond the limits of our language (poetry, arts, ...) is nonsense. When we get to that insight we may find that the best communication about the essence of life, art or poetry is wordless. Throughout their practice, Maxim Frank and Loïc Van Zeebroek direct their distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility toward observations of, and engagements with, the essence of painting and sculpture.
 
Loïc Van Zeebroek’s paintings question the construction of the pictorial image, from figuration to abstraction and vice-versa. A gradient sky becomes a place for reflection and contemplation. A coloured painting of a field becomes a Color Field painting. A meticulously painted circle becomes a sun and vice-versa. Painting nature becomes the nature of the painting.
 
Maxim Frank’s sculptures and installations question the teleology of objects, their initial and intrinsic purpose. Maxim’s sculptures challenge and investigate the customs and conventions that are inherently related to everyday objects. The Ladder is a recurring motif: its linear purity becomes a critical field on which Maxim explores the relations between utility, art, design and taboo.
 
Dauwens & Beernaert Gallery
Address : Av. de Stalingrad  26    1000 Brussel
Opening hours : Wednesday up until Saturday  11h - 18h   and by appointment
 
 
 

6660 - 20170507 - Galerie De Zwarte Panter - Antwerpen - Pjeroo Roobjee - 19.03.2017-07.05.2017

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Galerie De Zwarte Panter
Address
Hoogstraat 70 - 74
2000 Antwerpen
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Sunday  13h30 - 18h
 
 

6659 - 20170415 - Office Baroque - Brussel - Tyson Reeder - 11.03.2017-15.04.2017

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TYSON REEDER
Office Baroque is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Tyson Reeder at the downtown gallery.
Reeder will be presenting a suite of new paintings and collages, a mix of colorful landscapes and cityscapes, addressing both the natural world as a space for relaxation and escape, as well as the city as a theater of human action. Reeder debuted with an exhibition of figurative work at Daniel Reich Gallery in New York in 2002. His interest for landscape and popular culture have remained constant and so has his love for sensuous colors, “transforming the ordinary” in the manner of Pierre Bonnard, “where the color becomes the subject”. Reeder is a painter of everyday life, setting up his easel outdoors using painting as one would command an iPhone to take pictures of buildings, deploying a vast array of academic as well as self taught painterly modes. Found and printed materials like skylines from handmade Chicago house music fliers show up in the paintings together with denim, fish nets, broken pencils and fake plastic popcorn. Compositionally his subject matter appears in distorted perspective, that he shares with expressionism’s ego-oriented visual regime. Formally the work of Reeder embraces archaic modernist registers, such as a vivid palette that he has in common with the fauvists. Technically Reeder is known for mixing painted areas with pencil hatching and dotted fields, making his work instantly recognisable as playful, poetic, seductive and mildly hallucinatory.
Tyson Reeder was born in Fairfax in 1974 and lives and works in Chicago. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at CANADA, New York; The Green Gallery, Milwaukee and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York. His work has appeared in group exhibitions at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Venus Over Los Angeles, Los Angeles; Karma, New York and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. His work is included in the collections of MoMA, New York; Rubell Family Collection, Miami and MMoCA, Madison. He will be included in the exhibition Animal Farm curated by Sadie Laska at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich in May.
 
Office Baroque
Address
Bloemenhofplein  5   1000 Brussel
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Saturday  11h - 18h  and by appointment
 
 

6658 - 20170416 - Galerie Transit - Mechelen - Dusty Glasses - 10.03.2017-16.04.2017

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Three artists from three different regions and cultures, pose questions about civil liberties.  They each use a different medium.  Johan Creten brings new works in bronze, among which a one and a half meters high and two meters wide version of 'The Price of Freedom, presented for the first time in Europe. Khalili presents a conceptual photographic work that imposes conditions upon the relationship with the owner of the work. Zvyagintseva invests existing objects with a political message. She shows, among other works, a small prison cell made of fabric, a work that was also presented in 2015 at the Venice Biennial.
 
 
JOHAN CRETEN
 
In accordance with the artist’s desire to generate contradictory interpretations, this sculpture can be seen as the symbol of power and strength, the heraldic animal of many empires; at the same time it can also be understood as a bird covered with oil, fragile and vulnerable. In this piece, different ideologies - ecological and political, individual and multiple, evil and holy - come together.  [Nicola Trezzi in the Wall Street Journal, 26-8-2015]
In the course of history, the eagle has often stood as a symbol of power, with the Nazi era as an absolute low point. Although eagles stand for freedom in American legends, they also symbolize power and authority. With his work ‘The Price of Freedom’ Creten points to the danger of this shift in symbolic meaning.  [Elien Haentjens, 2013]
Unlike the eagle which functions as a symbol of freedom in American legends, in Indo-European cultures, the eagle represents very different, often contradictory symbolic values. Sometimes it is an expression of power that no longer guarantees individual freedoms (expression, property, etc.). Creten warns us against reappropriating these kinds of symbols. [Ludovic Recchia, 2007]
 
 
 
YAZAN KHALILI
 
The Artwork is a photograph that contains a contract that speaks in the name of the artwork.
The main premise of this work is the question of boycotting, more precisely: can an artwork boycott? And can we take seriously what the artwork is trying to say? Creating a situation in which the artwork demands the boycott of the institution it refuses to be exhibited in, owned or collected by.
The Artwork is a photograph (79 x 120 cm) which contains the contract that has been drawn up by Dr. Martin Heller, a Berlin-based lawyer who specializes in art-related issues.
The contract, even though it is written in legal terms and wording, does not stand up when presented in a legal context. Its failure is due to the fact that the artwork itself cannot speak in a legal sense, it cannot be part of the contract, it cannot speak for itself, only the artist can speak for it, which is why this contract fails to represent the artwork in itself. The contract creates a kind of legal and ethical paradox.
The project aims to investigate the boundaries between law and justice, how justice cannot be expressed through law, and how law becomes a language that includes and excludes subjects according to its own regulations and structures.
The photograph contains the contract the artwork speaks through, stating its clear demands on the way in which it can be exhibited, collected, and owned. However, whoever exhibits, collects, or owns this artwork can decide whether to obey these demands and conditions or not, depending on whether they take the artwork seriously, or not.
The work has been produced with the great help and assistance of Dr. Martin Heller.
 
 
 
 
ANNA ZVYAGINTSEVA
 
Anna Zvyagintseva is presenting a cage made of fabric—a knitted cage. In Ukrainian courtrooms there is always a cage in which a person is forced to sit if he or she is considered dangerous. The process of knitting, here, is a metaphor for the time that is taken away from activists by the court system, even if they are not imprisoned. So the work is about time, and about soft repression, too.  [Alexander Scrimgeour in Artforum, Oct. 2010]
 
'The cage' object has the form and size of a standard cage for a defendant in a court hall. This cage, however, is made of knitted fabric, as if it were made with a crochet hook. This work acts as a reminder of the criminal prosecution of social activists in the Ukraine today. Artists were forced to be present at lots of court meetings together with other public representatives so as to make the court processes transparent and attract public attention. Knitting is a metaphor for the time spent in court, which can be seen as form of punishment in its own right because of the undetermined duration of the proceedings. The soft material with which the cage is knitted provides a certain kind of comfort against the everyday repression for those who don’t have any alternative.
 
 
Galerie Transit
Address
Zandpoortvest 10
2800 Mechelen
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Sunday  14h - 18h
from April 17th to May 21th by appontment
 
 

6657 - 20170506 - Xavier Hufkens Gallery - Brussel - Michel François - 17.03.2017-06.05.2017

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MICHEL FRANCOIS 
 
Xavier Hufkens is delighted to announce the opening of an exhibition of recent work by Michel François.
In a presentation that is as formally beautiful as it is intriguing, Michel François punctuates the gallery space with a series of sculptural works that depart from the rigid geometry of the line. Vertical and horizontal, suspended or freestanding, appearing in a masonry grid, defining a corner or marked across the wall: the linear trace is all pervasive.
Yet each sharply defined edge, line, angle or plane also reveals its procedural antithesis: the organic, capricious and uncontrolled forms that arise during the making of the works. François’s practice is centred on what might be described as ‘controlled loss of control’ or, in other words, allowing the medium to do its will. These contradictions are particularly visible in Ruins of a Sky-Blue Wall, the major new work that confronts viewers upon entering the gallery. Constructed out of 1,200 hand-cast plaster bricks, this sculptural wall is as much an object of wonder as it is a barrier or impediment. On the one hand, it appears weightless, cartoon-like, tactile, surreal; yet it also represents painstaking labour, is heavy, solid and obstructing. To make the bricks, François poured plaster into moulds filled with tiny Styrofoam spheres; as the material hardened, it acquired a granular texture. Thanks to the friability of the plaster, each brick could be subsequently abraded, thereby creating imperfect forms with uniquely sponge-like textures. Plaster also ‘cements’ the bricks together, only this time coloured light-blue: an allusion to the sky, or the open space; the ‘cracks through which the light gets in’, but which, likewise, also holds the entire structure together. While the wall looks strong and forceful, closer inspection reveals an inherent tension and fragility.

Shiny Corner materialises an equivalent transformation: to make this work, the artist hurled molten tin at the seam between his studio floor and wall. The hot metal hitting the cold surface caused it to solidify into globular rivulets, its motion and fluidity abruptly arrested. At the same time, this haphazard gesture also produced a perfect right angle that, now upended, completes the corner of the room. The same technique is used to opposite effect in the dark, matte, otherworldly sculptures made of asphalt, only here the works are dark, shadowy, light-absorbing, alien. Technical precision and chance are also evident in the artist’s Souffles perdus sculptures. In the work on display, a cluster of individually mouth-blown, silvered glass balloons are tethered to a taught, vertical line. And as if to counteract the luminosity of the limpid, natural forms — filled with the breath of life, but also strangely deflated — a solid geometric cube of carbonised wood leaves its dark and dusty trail across the pristine, white-washed walls.

Francois’s works are, in a manner of speaking, ‘pieces of evidence’: the physical proofs of activities and events that have occurred elsewhere. They are action-based sculptures in the sense of being both the product and record of a controlled, but unpredictable, gesture: throwing (tin), blowing (glass), dragging (charcoal), stacking (belt buckles, peanuts), constructing (masonry) and pouring (plaster, aluminium, asphalt).
The line, as a leitmotiv, also possesses a conceptual significance. Lines divide, create borders, or establish thresholds. While this is immediately obvious when pure geometry gives way to organic form (or is it vice versa?), these junctures also call to mind other, more actual points of contact: the invisible barriers between seemingly different, contradictory and irreconcilable forces, peoples and cultures. But boundaries can also be permeable, as suggested by the sponge-like, porous textures of the bricks; soft as hinted at by the powdery charcoal; or fixed and impenetrable, like the unyielding metal.

In his subtle visual translations of these dualities – between control and ungovernability, conscious decision-making and random chance, and between materials and forms – Michel François alludes to the undertow of opposite and relative truths that, whether we are aware of them or not, define our very existence.

Michel François (b.1956, Saint-Trond) lives and works in Brussels. Recent solo exhibitions include: Nineteen thousand posters. 1994-2016, Frac île-de-France, le château, Rentilly, France (2016); Pieces of Evidence, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2014); Pièces à conviction, CRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Sète, France (2012); Michel François. Le Trait commun, Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (2012); 45.000 affiches. 1994-2011, MAC’s, Site du Grand Hornu, Belgium (2011); Plans d’évasion, IAC, Villeurbanne, France (2010); Plans d’évasion, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium (2009) and Hespérides I, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2009). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions such as Documenta IX (1992), the São Paolo Biennial XXII (1994), the 48th Venice Biennial (1999) and Sonsbeek 2008. Together with Ann Veronica Janssens he contributed to The Song (2009) by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Other collaborations with De Keersmaeker include En Atendant (2010) and Partita 2 (2013).


Xavier Hufkens Gallery
Address
St-Jorisstraat 107
1050 Brussel
 
Opening hours
Tuesday up until Saturday  11h - 18h
 
 

6656 - 20170408 - Xavier Hufkens Gallery - Brussel - Antony Gormley - 09.03.2017-08.04.2017

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ANTONY GORMLEY  -  LIVING ROOM
 
Thirty years since his first solo exhibition with Xavier Hufkens, Antony Gormley asks: ‘if a mind occupies the body and the body occupies a building, how does it feel if we substitute building for body? To what degree are we sheltered and contained by our structures and to what extent are we controlled by them?’
 
The exhibition borrows its title from LIVING ROOM, the new two-part sculpture around which the exhibition is centred. As is typical of Gormley’s oeuvre, this installation departs from a concrete and tangible given: the artist’s own body. Working from three-dimensional scans, the resulting figures have been reduced to a series of interpenetrating cell-like structures, some of which are solid, others of which are open. The formation of LIVING ROOM calls to mind, in both plan and elevation, any number of utopian buildings. Whereas the work resembles a three-dimensional architectural model when viewed from the side, an altogether different view can be gained from the upper floor of the double-height gallery space. From here, the work is not dissimilar from an aerial view, or ground plan, of a modernist housing ensemble. This lofty vantage point is also the ideal position from which to study the perfect symmetry of the two forms and the subtle but corresponding differences in negative and positive space. This key work alludes, both literally and figuratively, to the notion of the ‘house’, which is here articulated as a man-made construction and shelter, without which we would ultimately perish, but also as the bodily ‘shell’ that protects something infinitely more remote and enigmatic: the cerebral inner ‘space’ where thought and emotion reside. In his exploration of the points of contact between these two spheres, the work bears witness to Gormley’s on-going investigation of geometry, abstraction and our metaphysical relationship to the built environment. Through materials, gesture and spatial relationships, the artist strives to give form to that which is least visible and most profound: the sensation of occupying a body that, in turn, inhabits the world.
 
The visual language of LIVING ROOM is also evident in the seven free-standing ‘open blockwork’ sculptures on view. Described by Gormley as ‘conflating the body that occupies space with the vessels that contain it’, these works are a further iteration on the theme of interiority and exteriority, and the notion of a vessel (body) within a vessel (building) – and vice versa. But just as our physical and emotional states alter, so too do the figures, with the open and closed surfaces supplying different degrees of transparency or opacity. In this exhibition, the abstracted human figures can be heavy and solid, as in the cast-iron pieces, or tenuous and insubstantial to the point of appearing to disappear into the surrounding space. As we circulate these nuanced beings, they invite us to enjoy the interplay of mass to void, dark to light, and open to closed.

The blockwork figures are complemented by recent linear sculptures in square-section stainless-steel bar. Collectively known as ‘framers’ and ‘liners’, the artist describes these works as the ‘objective mappings of subjective space’. Either free-standing or suspended, they structure and energise the intimate and domestic spaces of the gallery. Upstairs, a new work SET is shown alongside CONSOLE III, an open framework evocation of the ‘tanker’ entitled FALL V. A series of related drawings completes the display.

Permeating the exhibition is the language of modernity, most notably De Stijl and American minimalism, which is here harnessed to evoke pathos. Gormley’s work can thus be viewed as a continuation of this abstract tradition in the sense that his geometric constructions and sculptural voids eschew illustration and mimesis while allowing an open ground for projection and reflection.

Antony Gormley (b.1950, London) was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. His work has been exhibited all over the world, most recently in Object, National Portrait Gallery, London (2016-2017); Event Horizon, Hong Kong (2015-2016); Land, various Landmark Trust properties in the UK (2015-2016); Human, Forte Di Belvedere, Florence, Italy (2015); Another Time, Mardalsfossen, Norway (2015); Sculpture 21st: Antony Gormley, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2014-2015); Expansion Field, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland (2014); Firmament And Other Forms, Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium (2013). Antony Gormley lives and works in London.


Xavier Hufkens Gallery
Address
St-Jorisstraat 6
1050 Brussel
 
Opening hours
Tuesday up until Saturday  11h - 18h
 
 
 


2017-03-05

6655 - 20170416 - Galerie Liehrmann - Liège - Don Ken - 11.03.2017-16.04.2017

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Galerie Liehrmann
 
Address
Blv. Piecot 4
4000 Liège
 
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Saturday  13h - 18h30
Sunday 11h - 13h
 
 

2017-03-02

6654 - 20170416 - Geukens & De Vil - Knokke - Philip Aguirre Y Otegui - 26.02.2017-06.04.2017

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PHILIP AGUIRRE Y OTEGUI  - "Suite Camerounaise"
 
 
Geukens & De Vil
Address
Zeedijk 735
8300 Knokke - Het Zoute
 
Opening hours
Saturday - Sunday: 11 am - 1 pm / 3 pm - 6 pm
School Holidays: 11 am - 1pm / 3 pm - 6 pm (Closing days Tuesday and Wednesday)
 and by appointment
 
 
 
 

6653 - 20170312 - d'Haudrecy Art Gallery - Knokke - Dan Steffan - 25.02.2017-12.03.2017

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'Noces de perles' - oil on canvas
 
DAN STEFFAN
 
 
d'Haudrecy Art Gallery
Address
Zeedijk Zoute 779
8300 Knokke
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Monday  11h - 13h & 14h30 - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 
 

6652 - 20170415 - Puls Contemporary Ceramics - Brussel - Michal Fargo & Tessa Eastman - 11.03.2017-15.04.2017

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For this exhibition, Puls is delighted to introduce a new body of work by two dynamic women at the vanguard of the British contemporary ceramic art scene.
Both artists are London based and MA graduates of London’s Royal College of Art. In their relatively short career they have been able to impress many with their originality, skill and above all with a daring new approach to the art form.
 
TESSA EASTMAN (United Kingdom, 1984)
The meticulously hand built cloud bundles and complex crystal formations created by Tessa Eastman have found a serious following among collectors and gallery owners. Each one of her pieces appears curiously alive with movement. Building her shapes Eastman draws inspiration from organic forms as seen through a microscope. The artist explores the strangeness of growth of natural phenomena in which systems flow and digress from an intended pattern. She subsequently attempts to translate her findings in colourful glazed ceramics. Grouping her works highlights the contrast and creates a dialogue between pieces whereby negative space is valued as much as positive space.
While creating she looks for contrasts such as soft and hard, order and chaos, geometry and irregularity. Eastman: “ I aim to fix ungraspable states such as fleeting clouds, which represent both the ideal and the perishable, the doom and the fantasy.”.
Eastman calls herself ‘a modeler at heart’ and it is through sensitivity to form and glaze that her pieces become animated.  Much time is therefore invested in glaze research and testing. Eastman: “Colour is inspiring to me and it can help create distinction between form and shape. Matt and shiny, coarse and smooth and hot and cool coloured glazes are used to offer depth of character to a work”.
 
MICHAL FARGO (Israel, 1984)
A couple of years ago, while still living and working in Israel, Fargo took a radical approach to ceramics; she started ripping blocks of spongy foam into shapes or cutting them coarsely with a knife. She then dipped these shapes in liquid porcelain with a coloured stain and fired them. “By developing a different working technique that does not require molds I was able to design free forms that are no longer restricted by parting lines and pouring points, I was also able to get different and diverse surfaces”, Fargo says. The resulting work instantly met with an eager audience of buyers and collectors from both the fine arts and the design scene, not just in the UK, but as far as Australia and South Korea.
Fargo’s later experiments with foam include hollowing sponge blocks and filling these with liquids. Once fired, the vase form is dipped in intensely pigmented resin. The emerging object is uncannily organic in appearance with coral like surfaces rarely seen in ceramics.
Michal Fargo studied ceramic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem before moving to London where - after obtaining an MA from the Royal Academy of Arts - she now lives and works.
 
Puls Contemporary Ceramics
Address : Edelknaapstraat 19 (Châtelain)   1050 Brussel
Opening hours : Wednesday up until Saturday  13h - 18h
 

6651 - 20170429 - Galerij De Ziener - Asse - Elke Van Kerckvoorde - 26.03.2017-29.04.2017

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Elke Van Kerckvoorde - 'beeld.merk'


Het werk van Elke Van Kerckvoorde wordt gekarakteriseerd door het ontlenen van bestaande vormen van logo’s, verpakking- of ander reclamemateriaal die ze bewerkt of combineert om zelf beelden te gaan maken die een gevoel van herkenbaarheid oproepen. Van Kerckvoorde beschreef haarzelf in een eerdere tentoonstelling als Beeldend Kunstenaar/ Commerçant en benadrukt hiermee het balanceren op de grens van het commerciële en decoratieve in haar werk. Van Kerckvoorde situeert zich voornamelijk in de praktijk van de schilderkunst, al voelen deze schilderwerken meer aan als stickers of prints op panelen. Door gebruik te maken van computerprogramma’s om voorafgaand aan het schilderen de beelden te creëren, en door de beelden meerdere keren te gebruiken en hergebruiken, bevraagt ze zowel de uniekheid van een werk alsook het schilderen als medium.
 
 
 
Galerij De Ziener
Address
Stationsstraat 55
1730 Asse
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Sunday  15h - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 

2017-03-01

6650 - 20170515 - Cafmeyer Gallery - Knokke - Group exhibition - 01.04.2017-15.05.2017

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GROUP EXHIBITION
 
Roberto Barni (It.) – Eleanor Cardozo (UK) – Mauro Corda (Fr) – Jesús Curiá (Sp)
Rabarama (It.) – François Vandenberghe (Fr.) – Marek Zyga (Pol)
 
 
Cafmeyer Gallery
Address
Kustlaan 29
8300 Knokke
 
Opening hours
Monday & Friday
  11h - 12h30 & 14h - 18h30
Thursday, Saturday & Sunday 11h -18h30
 
 
 

6649 - 20170402 - Absolute Art Gallery - Brugge - Christine Comyn 'Amour' -11.03.2017-02.04.2016

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Absolute Art Gallery
Address
Dijver 4-5
8000 Brugge
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Tuesday  11h - 18h30
During school holidays : open every day
 
 
 

6648 - 20170330 - Galerie Dessers - Leuven - Who's Bad ? - 25.02.2017-30.03.2017

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Franca Ravet, Katrin Dekoninck, Hervé Martijn en Hans Bruyneel
 
 
Galerie Dessers
Address
Naamsestraat 11 & 13
3000 Leuven
 
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Saturday  11h - 18h
 
 
 
 

6647 - 20170330 - Galerie Dessers - Hasselt - Painted on canvas - 25.02.2017-30.03.2017

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Painted on canvas
 
kunst op doek op de bovenverdieping: Ripollés – Bruno Vekemans – Jan Cobbaert – Sigrid von Lintig – Frank Slabbinck
grafisch werk op de benedenverdieping : Karel Appel – Jaume Plensa – Bruno Vekemans – Pierre Alechinsky
 
Galerie Dessers
Address
Leopoldplein 9
3500 Hasselt
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Saturday  11h - 18h
Sunday  15h - 19h
 
 
 
 
 

2017-02-28

6646 - 20170402 - Zebrastraat - Gent - Tja Ling - 27.02.2017-02.04.2017

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TJA LING

Tja Ling is een visueel artiest geboren in Nederland met Chinese roots. Voordat ze vijf jaar geleden naar Gent verhuisde studeerde ze Fashion Communication aan de kunstacademie van Utrecht. De modewereld bleek niets voor haar dus besloot ze illustratie te gaan studeren in Gent. Daar herontdekte ze haar liefde voor tekenen en schilderen en nam ze de tijd om een eigenzinnige serie van werk te maken.

Haar werken zijn een verbeelding van de culturele tendensen waarin zij is opgegroeid en vormen tegelijkertijd een zoektocht naar haar eigen oriëntatie daarbinnen. Haar ouders vluchtten in de jaren ‘70 van het communistische China naar Nederland waar zij meer vrijheid ondervonden na hun verleden van onderdrukking en armoede. Haar materialistische opvoeding en opleiding in de mode brachten haar op een terugslag in een spirituele tocht waarin zij zoekt naar betekenis in het onderbewustzijn en emotionele intelligentie in plaats van het rationele en het tastbare.

 
Zebrastraat
Address
Zebrastraat
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Monday up until Saturday  10h - 17h
 
 
 
 

 


6645 - 20170430 - Tatjana Pieters - Gent - Anneke Eussen & Ella Goerner - 26.03.2017-30.04.2017

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ANNEKE EUSSEN



ELLE GOERNER
 
 
Tatjana Pieters
Address
Nieuwevaart 124/001
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Friday  14 - 18h
Sunday  12h - 18h
 
 
 

6644 - 20170319 - Tatjana Pieters - Gent - Full Moon in Leo - 29.01.2017-19.03.2017

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FULL MOON IN LEO
 
JOHN FINNERAN - KRIS LEMSALU -  LISA VLAEMMINCK
 
 
Tatjana Pieters
Address
Nieuwevaart 124/001
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Friday  14 - 18h
Sunday  12h - 18h
 
 
 

6643 - 20170312 - Barbé Gallery - Gent - Group Show - 02.03.2017-12.03.2017

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Barbé Gallery
Address
Penitentenstraat 29
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Sunday  14h - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 
 

2017-02-27

6642 - 20170326 - Beukenhof-Phoenix Galleries - Kluisbergen - Dirk De Keyzer & Michel Provoost - 05.03.2017-26.03.2017

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DIRK DE KEYZER & MICHEL PROVOOST
 
Beukenhof-Phoenix Galleries
Address
Ronde van Vlaanderenstraat 9 - 11
9690 Kluisbergen
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Sunday  14h - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 
 

6641 - 20170514 - Galerie Schoots + Van Duyse - Antwerpen - Jürgen Brodwolf & iK - 11.03.2017-14.05.2017

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Jürgen Brodwolf

Het werk van Jürgen Brodwolf ( °1932, Dübendorf, Zurich) is onlosmakelijk verbonden met de ‘Tubenfigur’, uitgeknepen verftubes met resten van verf en etikettering die hij in ontelbare variaties, in de vorm van de menselijke figuur kneedt. Sinds 1959 maken die symbolische menselijke figuren, die niet zelden zijn afgebeeld als schaduwen van zichzelf, deel uit van zijn oeuvre. Begin jaren ’70 duikt de tube-figuur op in zijn sculpturen en vanaf 1975 worden ze een onderdeel van zijn objectfoto’s.



iK

De plaats van het 'ik' is van cruciaal belang in elke kunststroming. Al eeuwen wordt het ego van de kunstenaar in zijn werk met golven anders benaderd. Hoewel de handtekening van de kunstenaar pas in de recentere kunstgeschiedenis een vast onderdeel werd van het werk, vonden kunstenaars altijd een weg om hun 'ik' in het werk te ontsluiten.

Met werk van Guy Vandenbranden, Geneviève Claisse, Bram Bogart, Jan Henderikse, Jan schoonhoven, Markus Lüpertz, Johan Tahon, Eja Siepman van den Berg, Robert Schad.

 
 
Galerie Schoots + Van Duyse
Address
Napoleonkaai 15
2000 Antwerpen
 
Opening hours
Wednesday up until Sunday  13h - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 

 
  


6640 - 20170326 - Galerie Jan Dhaese - Gent - Patrick Conrad - 26.02.2017-26.03.2017

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THE ULTIMATE LANDSCAPES - PATRICK CONRAD

chez nous les fleurs des pendules s'allument et les plumes encerclent la clarté
le matin de soufre lointain les vaches l'èchent les lys de sel
mon fils
mon fils
traînons toujours par la couleur du monde
qu'on dirait plus bleue que le métro et que l'astronomie
nous sommes trop maigres
nous n'avons pas de bouche
nos jambes sont raides et s'entrechoquent
nos visages n’ont pas de forme comme les étoiles
(…)

De kunstwerken van Patrick Conrad verbeelden geen opbeurende maar wel raadselachtige situaties. In zijn collages dompelt de kunstenaar haast plichtbewust een associatief beeldend absurdisme onder in een grauwe wereld. Dikwijls vormen imposante en onheilspellende wolkenpartijen de achtergrond voor een bonte bende figuranten en een bizar arsenaal attributen: zwijnen, erotisch-poserende halfnaakte meisjes, centauren, onthoofde mensenhoofden en dierlijke schedels, kalongs, Uluru, gemaskerde mannen, schelpen, parels en koralen, U.F.O.'s, gasmaskers en snaveldokters, circusfreaks, obelisken en fabrieken. Doordat de kunstenaar prenten gebruikt die de esthetiek van de tegenwoordig erg populaire jaren '20 hebben en doordat hij die met schaar en lijm ijverig manipuleert en verwerkt tot nogal eigenaardige ensceneringen, kabbelt er een soort vintage-gone-wrong sfeertje doorheen zijn artistiek oeuvre. Conrad zelf doet ook wat raadselachtig over de collages in zijn tentoonstelling. The Ultimate Landscapes moeten voor zichzelf spreken vind hij, want in de plaats van kunst spreken is sinds de jaren '60 sensationeel uitgemolken door een aanstootgevende groep conceptuele kunstenaars. Kunst mag gerust baden in gevoelens van onbehagen en nostalgie maar alle kunst is altijd ook conceptueel en uit een idee ontspruitend. Het één hoeft het ander niet uit te sluiten. Het is trouwens net een spannend en inspirerend onweerlegbaar feit dat in die zogezegde onbegrensde vrijheid van de jaren '60, waar Conrad naar verwijst, enerzijds lokale, benevelde hippie Ferre Grignard op zijn gitaar zijn goedgekende deuntje Ring Ring, I've Got To Sing stond te rammelen en anderzijds een Joseph Kosuth zijn semiologisch-tautologische installatie One and Three Chairs realiseerde, om zo maar een straf voorbeeld van een  conceptueel kunstwerk te noemen. Uiteindelijk is ook het dadaïsme, de eclectische artistieke en literaire stroming van honderd jaar geleden die Patrick Conrad erg genegen is, ontstaan op basis van het idee zich radicaal te willen afzetten tegen de gruwel van de Eerste Wereldoorlog door de kunst zélf brutaal en schokkend te gaan bespotten en dàt te presenteren als zijnde een symbolische aanval op de schijnheilige waarden van een “beschaafde” wereld. Dat is een ketting van boeiende concepten, dat dadaïsme. Nu, een slordig centennium later leven wij ook te midden allerlei bloederige en wrede oorlogen maar dat is niet concreet waar Conrad zich tegen afzet in zijn eigen kunstwerken. De werken in de tentoonstelling The Ultimate Landscapes gaan over een individuele misschien bewust eenzame, introspectieve dwaling van de geest: “innerlijke landschappen, gedroomde landschappen, spirituele landschappen, onirische landschappen.” Dat door de kunstenaar zelf geprezen onirische aspect brengt ons tot in het hart van het aanvankelijk op dromen en psychoanalyse gebaseerde surrealisme, een andere gekende kunststroming die hem boeit. Doorheen Conrad's reeks ultieme landschappen zweven een complex aantal sensitiviteiten die melancholisch zijn en ook wrang, komisch, duister, sensueel, vuil, misnoegd, trots, fatalistisch, dartel, zwaarmoedig, hoopvol en uitzichtloos. Voorgaande schrijvers situeerden de intensiteit van zijn collages en gedichten ergens tussen hemel en hel maar dat is maar weinig verhelderend want elk van ons leeft volgens zo'n allegorische visie tussen die twee archaïsche extremen. Om deze méér dan vijftig collage landschappen van de kunstenaar doeltreffender te positioneren valt er duidelijk méér zinsvols te rapen in de toevoeging van het attributief “ultimate“ in de titel van de tentoonstelling. Patrick Conrad werkt als een bezetene met de notie dat het leven onverbiddelijk eindig is. The Ultimate Landscapes is daarom een welgeslaagde, demiurgische tour de force: een waarachtige beproeving van deze veelzijdige kunstenaar om het ultieme te vatten in niet één beeld maar in een reeks die oneindig zou mogen zijn.

(...)
cristaux points sans force feu brulée la basilique
folle : les zigzags craquent
téléphone
mordre les cordages se liquéfier l’arc
grimper
astrale
la mémoire
vers le nord par son fruit double comme la chair crue
faim feu sang

Tristan Tzara,“la grand complainte de mon obscurité trois” – Gepubliceerd in “vingt-cinq poèmes” met illustraties en houtsnedes van Hans Arp, 1918.

Jan Van Woensel is
onafhankelijk curator
www.facebook.com/curatorjan


Galerie Jan Dhaese
Address
Ajuinlei 15b
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Saturday  14h - 18h
Sunday  11h - 14h
 
 
 

6639 - 20170325 - Gallery Sofie Van de Velde - Antwerpen - Rein Dufait - 24.02.2017-25.03.2017

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REIN DUFAIT - ' HALFS - OM HEELS '
 
Gallery Sofie Van de Velde
Address
Lange Leemstraat 262
2018 Antwerpen
 
Opening hours
Thursday up until Saturday 14h - 18h
and by appointment
 
 
 

6638 - 20170423 - Galerie William Wauters - Oosteeklo - Klaar Cornelis - 12.03.2017-23.04.2017

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KLAAR CORNELIS
 
In de galerie 12.03.2017 - 23.04.2017
In het beeldenbos 12.03.2017 - 01.10.2017
 
 
Galerie William Wauters
Address
Antwerpse Heirweg 5
9968 Oosteeklo
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Sunday  14h - 18h
 
 
 
 

2017-02-21

6637 - 20170415 - Arielle d'Hauterives - Brussel - Cecilia Shishan - 16.03.2017-15.04.2017

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CECILIA SHISHAN - CHONIQUES D'ENFANCES

« Chroniques d’Enfances » est une fiction basée sur des faits réels à partir de textes et d’images d’enfants ayant un lien personnel avec l’Art. Il y a un détachement des images par rapport à leur signification originale afin de recréer une nouvelle réalité picturale. Ce que l’enfant retient, ce qui le trouble, les mots qu’il intériorise, ce qu’il fait, ce qu’il oublie, la trace qu’il gardera en grandissant.  Cette vie passée n’existe que dans son souvenir et cela reste un mystère, une énigme.


Arielle d'Hauterives
 
Address
Quai des Pénisches 69
1000 Brussel
 
Opening hours
by appointment
 
 
 
 
 

6636 - 20170312 - Shoobil Gallery - Antwerpen - Evelien Gysen - 24.02.2017-12.03.2017

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EVELIEN GYSEN - FOREST HILL (what's calling you)
 
Pareidolia, the notion of recognising patterns whereof the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none exists, is at the centre of Evelien Gysen’s lens based and graphic art.
Hermetically sealed landscapes - made up of pixelated versions of photographed models - contribute to illusion and its equivalent: the observation of an unreliable authentic.
Her vagaries provoke an unsettling intrigue, where fantasy and belief collude to atone for the under-stipulated lure of meaning.
The false positives occasioned by human fragility, underpin a necessity for the contemporary icon which Evelien's oeuvre satisfies.

(sho͞o’bĭl) also presents Forest Hill (what's calling you), a publication of 24 images. Evelien narrates an ambience where fantasy and illusion walk closely together.
Translated by Micha Eden Erdész
 
Shoobil Gallery
Address : Museumstraat 4  2000 abtwerpen
Opening hours : Thursday up until Saturday 14h - 19h - Sunday 14h-17h30
and by appointment
 
 


6635 - 20170402 - Jan Colle - Gent - Caroline Van der Straeten & Bruno Mertens - 05.03.2017-02.04.2017

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Caroline Van der Straeten maakt digitale prints op papier of canvas, waarmee ze de eigenschappen en de mogelijkheden verwerkt van het medium.

Haar werk is niet direct geïnspireerd door een zichtbare omgeving, maar ontstaat vanuit een innerlijke visie waar organische en constructieve elementen samenvallen in een vreemde wereld.

Mysterieus en spiritueel, een wereld die bol staat van bizarre details en daardoor een klimaat oproept met een duidelijke surrealistische ondertoon.

Haar schilderwerk, acryl op doek, wilt en blijkt geen afleiding te zijn van haar digitale werk. Deze werkstukken zijn zuiver schilderkundig uitgewerkt en vormen een subtiele ab stracte uitdrukking. Interessant is de vaststelling dat bij een geïnstalleerde confrontatie van de twee technieken er een bivalente samenhang ontstaat waarbij de diversiteit van het digi tale en het manuele wordt benadrukt.

 

Bruno Mertens
heeft een achtergrond van Keramiek en Vrije Grafiek aan de Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten te Gent.
Gemengde technieken vanuit deze achtergrond worden geïntegreerd in zijn huidig werk. Elk schilderij is het resultaat van een "zichzelf uit te dagen" proces naar wat essentieel is.
Orde en chaos, opbouw en destructie vormen hierbij de ingrediënten.
Het is als het ware afbreken om op te bouwen. Lijnen worden door middel van herhaling getrokken, gekrast in de gelaagde materie en zorgen voor nuances in de structuur en opdeling.
Door te spelen met structuur en kleur ontstaat er een dynamisch verhaal waarin beweging en compositie centraal staan.
 
 
Galerij Jan Colle
 
Address
Jacob Van Caeneghemstraat 16
9000 Gent
 
Opening hours
Friday up until Sunday  14h - 18h
and by appointment