Newsletter
GEORGE YOUNG
and
« A conversation with MICHAEL BORREMANS »
England.
b.1981.
GEORGE YOUNG collects, edits, reproduces and assembles images of cultural artifacts, ephemera and literary fiction. The paintings are simplified and estranged from their previous contexts and coupled with precise, formal structures that extend and respond to the painting environment.
The works are on paper, unframed and are fragile, fragmentary; they’re surface vs. object and seem to be interchangeable and readily moved – a constant revolving until the moment of exhibition. The wooden structures are dislocated supports or framing devices. Without their conventional use, they are placed around a space performing new functions or remaining idle.
Each exhibition is a chance to rearrange themes and images to suit each specific space. New arrangements change the context of each painting, the resulting narrative -and our understanding of it- highlighting the malleability of images as meaning makers.
HRAPPUR MAGNUSSON
Iceland
W009 hrappur magnusson
ICELAND
Opening
Friday 11 of December 2009
6pm > 9pm
Exhibition
12 of December 2009 > 9 of January 2009
1pm > 6pm
or by appointment (+32 495 77 33 33)
The WEproject is inviting the icelandic artist Hrappur Magnússon to present a solo exhibition before returning back to Iceland after four years living and working in Brussels. Hrappur Magnússon has prepared a specific project for this show focusing on the contrast of presence and disparition.
His installation reflects different aspects of concience and subconsciousness.
Hrappur Magnússon is born in 1971 in Reykjavik.
WEproject thanks the Embassy of Iceland for its support.
PIETER LAURENS MOL
The Netherlands.
b.1946
« puu – puu – puu – tsjing – tsjing – tjaf – tjaf – tsjit »
W008 PIETER LAURENS MOL
En collaboration avec la galerie Fortlaan 17.
“puu – puu – puu – tsjing – tsjing – tjaf – tjaf – tsjit”
vernissage: jeudi 4 novembre 2009
exposition: du 5 au 28 novembre 2009
Pieter Laurens Mol, né à Breda (Pays-Bas) en 1946, s’est fait connaître sur la scène internationale par ses photographies conceptuelles réalisées dans les années ‘70 et ‘80, dans lesquelles il se met lui-même en scène dans des situations d’équilibre fragile, aussi bien physique que mental. En savoir plus…
MAXIME BRYGO
W007 MAXIME BRYGO
Newland
Le Weproject a décidé de consacrer chaque année le meilleur photographe sorti d’une école d’art en Belgique. L’occasion est donnée ainsi à l’étudiant de prendre directement un rendez-vous avec le monde professionnel. En savoir plus…
LIV BUGGE and TILDA LOVELL
Norway/ Sweden
Liv: b.1974
Tilda:b.1972
“ You make me want to die in the countryside”
Liv Bugge- WE, Brussels, opening May 2009
The work contains three video-installations and one sculptural work. In addition to this I have invited Tilda Lovell to use some space to show a shadow installation, related to Plato’s cave-allegory.
The four works all comes from a larger body of work that is a meditation on the novel “Heart of darkness” by Joseph Conrad. All these works circles around post-imperialistic questions, and deals greatly with the concept of pity.
The videos will be installed in special environments built for each of them. One is built into “a forest” with all the poles tattooed with a burning pen, the other is mounted in a shed and the third is built into a velvet curtain room. The sculptural work is a space of offering (see sketch), and can be mounted outdoors if there is such a space.
The three videos are as follows:
“Hyperborean-room ballads”, 20 min DVD video, 2008
In this work, Liv Bugge takes contact with her father and his lead-dog through a telepathic seance with a Congolese animal-interpreter in a hotel-room in Antwerpen. Questions are posed, and the answers reflect as much the interpreter as Bugge herself.
The idea of Hyperborea is a Greek myth about a place beyond the north winds where there is always sunshine. It was regarded the spiritual center of the planet, as there was also a material center close to the South pole (polar myth theory). This theory is anchored in newer esoteric thoughts (H.P. Blavatsky and R. Guénon), but also used by Nazi-theorists explaining why the humans are more and more ”apelike” the more south they live their lives, relating to the distance from the spiritual center of the north pole.
”We had no road”, 6 min DVD video, 2008
This work is partly based in one of the last poems of Friedrich Nietzcshe called ”Adrianes Complaint”, where he refers to an incident which marked his life and his started his search for his private ”God”. At 15, he went for a walk in the forest and there he met a huntsman. During the meeting with the hunter Nietzsche faints, and then awakes in his bed. During his writings he often refer to this huntsman as his God. This work is also influenced of the Polar Myth Theory, in which it is thought that once upon a time , before a crash, the axe of the earth was vertical, and then there was no rotation of the planet, and the north was everlasting sun. After this “hyperborean age”, the Earth was pushed out of orbit and started rotating around itself. The camera switches between hunting and being hunted.
”Exterminate all brutes”, 10 min DVD video, 2009
This work contains partly a visit to the basements of the Africa museum in Tervuren, Brussel, where the largest collection of central-African life is kept, both as stuffed animals and as scientific samples for research. This basement is a document, but can also be regarded a space of death, and a hunting trophy. The text following the images is explanations of how to open and clean poisoned wounds.
The sculptural work is inspired by a shamanistic ritual offering in Siberia, and consists of birch-trees with different dogs (sculptures) / furs hanging from the top.
This work refers to the central goal of the journey in the novel ”Heart of Darkness”, the inner station, where the house is surrounded by sticks with dried human heads on them. There is also a description by the animal-interpreter of this space in the first video.
Information regarding CV and activity
My late large workload is making a book together with Torpedo Press in Oslo, it will be finished spring 2009.
The latest solo-show I did was at Galleri Trafo in august-08, Asker/Oslo, where I showed one of the video-installations that I will show at WE-project, “Hyperborean-room Ballads”.
Tilda Lovell is participating with the video “The Choir-project”, an animated film where different creations form a choir, all singing with Lovell’s transformed voice.
My work often include materials that I have found, things that have had another life before the one I want to give them. Using for example skulls and bones from dead animals and branches from old trees, gives the work an existential tone.
I am working on a new installation for WE. An overhead-projector projects a picture of the entrance and first room of a cave. Another video-projector shows an animation of life moving around in the cave. These two pictures blends together as one. In front of the picture on the wall there is some simply built cave walls of cardboard, paper and fabric , that also gets lit up by the projectors. In front of the projected wall a creature lies on the floor. It has the scull of a moose and seems like it is sleeping. Objects like bottles and vases are also present in the cave. The animation consists of shadow-like drawings where small creatures moves and flies around. I will synchronize the pictures so it looks like the creatures appears from the objects and corners, and then you see the shadows on the cave walls. There will be a soundscape to the installation.
The picture is inspired by a 1700thcentury etching of saint Antonius hermitage in a cave where he gets tempted by the devil as well as the greek myth of Pandoras box. Pandora had a jar that curiosity made her open though she was told by Zeus not to, and so all evil and disease flew out in the world. I am also inspired by Plato’s cave allegory that speaks of what we see as reality and what really is.
SERGE FINSCHI
belgium
La gravité nous attache à notre passé, à notre stabilité. Cela nous permet de retrouver nos repères et de simuler des retranchements sous des formes ascensionnelles ou descendantes.
Le travail de Serge Finschi se pose dans ce sens. L’artiste soulève la question de la position stabilisée du corps face à sa mémoire.
Chaque oeuvre a son existence propre par son vécu ou le vécu que Finschi lui impose qui sera généré par sa réalisation. Son travail s’affiche indubitablement dans un registre de performance. Mais ces performances sont de l’ordre privé.
L’action qu’il produit en réalisant un dessin nécessite un effort physique dont lui seul est spectateur au même titre que l’objet «readymade» a subi des pressions, des attachements qui dans le temps ont développé sa modification.
Bien qu’étant incontrôlé on découvre dans cette exposition la dominante de deux teintes qui nous ramènent au corps et à la terre, à la gravité et au vide; l’ocre et le noir.
PAUL CASAER
belgium.
b.1967
« Ballades et Polonaises »
It has been some years since Paul Casaer produced sculptures. To be more precise, it dates back to 1998, seemingly lightyears in an artist’s existence, but still, here they are once again. In the meantime, photography had been his medium. The photo book in particular, because Paul Casaer’s images need to be read in sequences. Just as in a movie, the things he shows are as important as that which he does not show; the ‘off’-image of the framing, the ‘in-between’ image of the editing.
TOM DE PEKIN
France
b.1964
» PINE PONG »
.
Tom de Pekin n’est pas vraiment de Pekin mais de Savoie et vit à Paris. Artiste militant, graphiste, réalisateur, il s’intéresse au rapport texte image, au détournement, toujours dans un esprit érotico ludique. Il a travaillé pour les magazines Têtu, 360°, Les Lettres Françaises, Nova, mais aussi pour le Sneg, Amnesty International et Aides. Tom de Pekin est également auteur et réalisateur de clips présentés dans de nombreux festivals internationaux.
XAVIER NOIRET-THOME
France
b.1971
« HYPERSPECTIVE »
Depuis quinze ans, ce peintre français explore tous les genres de ce médium, sans pour autant suivre une quelconque chronologie ou fil programmatique. La peinture est disséquée, absorbée et digérée. Les couleurs acides viennent côtoyer le chrome ; où le dessin à la bombe balaie la matière minérale. Le classique tutoyant le populaire dans une grande et truculente parade.
CARLOS AIRES
Spain
b.1974
« VYNIL DECEMBER »
Le vynile c’est vénal, plastic noir pour discobole lancé au rayon dj de colargol, ce synthétique thermoplastique se raye et déraille de son sillon, de sa spirale.
En avant, en arrière, à rendre folle la tête de lecture, les « scratcher » s’en donnent à tue tête.
Carlos, lui, ne manque pas d’Air, il le cisèle, le démarque, le détourne, et joue des tours au gré des titres pour rendre le phonographique pornographique, iconographique.
L’enregistrement sonore se mue en silhouettes de corps orgasmiques, humoristiques et de paillettes.
Ça ne tourne plus rond
C’est normal
L’aiguille a du mâle.
Dites 33…
et tout s’en va
Du 15 au 31 octobre 2009, le WE-project accueillera en ses murs la Galerie Feizi (Shanghai), laquelle établit un travail avec
la nouvelle scène artistique Chinoise.
» New vision of Chinese art » est une exposition de groupe présentant sept artistes peintres, photographes et vidéastes (installation)
travaillant en Chine.
Irène Laub, Directrice de la Feizi Gallery et commissaire de l’exposition au WE-project présente une sélection personnelle d’artistes
de sa galerie et dresse au travers de cette événement, un portrait aussi diversifié qu’étonnant des caractères de l’art contemporain Chinois.
Cette exposition s’inscrit dans le cadre d’Europalia Chine qui couvrira les manifestations culturels de cette rentrée 2009.
Le vernissage de ‘New vision of Chinese art’ se déroulera au WE-project le mercredi 14 octobre 2009 de 18h à 21h30.