vrijdag 6 oktober 2017

SeptSaw

September saw us
visiting various shows again, taking time off to wander away & see some things en route – using the occasion too for a bit of distribution of a message I find important...(more on that later)

First off was a visit to the site of Vervoordt where Angel Vergara wars rounding up his Straatman activities – he had been appearing around Antwerp during August, but I never caught up with him) object was to transfer his whiteness in negative drawings, or rather reductive drawing, such as he did in St. Gilles a while back (see former blog) which I did not see to the end – this time taking the time and enjoying – had been a long time talking to our former café explorateur... interesting project around, silos & things, with Kapoor pavilion a real jewel...  

Then the Coffre Fort in Brussels and the it’s annex hotel now ready to receive guests- very pleasant stay guaranteed, some really nice ideas, a combined effort of the coffre-crew ( Thibaut Espiau, Istvan Huzjan and Gregoire Motte) and friends – quirky stuff, nice trouvailles, interesting slants, as well as fun – double guitar poppy style rockrollbathroom for instance -  interesting architectrural spaces & solutions - one would need to stay over night to get the full impression, as it was we just skimmed through... Off to Gent to the Experimental Intermedia house where Djos Janssens immersed us in a lux/ury fishbowl... the usual quizzical look one has become acquainted with... neon and modified windows, (and a bag-it calling “help me I’m all alone”) some strange influence on the way one looks without being able to put the finger on it (without poking out your eye)...

... then off to Antwerp again to the Inbox at MuHKA, arms in clusters, repetition at arms length, also intriguing and equally baffling... Lodgers was involved in a discussion too serious for my liking... across the way but too late for the inaugural bash curated by Charif Benhelima in the Zuiderpershuis-complex, but nice to wander wondering around some... open to chance encounters... further along Nadia Naveau & Nick Andrews getting together at the Zwarte Panter – not like they haven’t been, but now more inter-entwined artistically so to speak – interesting mixmatch (also of materials paper & ceramics), nice show with exceptional publication well worth while...



















Highlight was the presentation of Ludo Mich’s work at LLS 387, films that I know but good to see them bunched together and lots of archive material form bygone days of unfettered yore, and a bit of screaming and yelling of course as Ludo did his blue-beard rendition of Poe’s ‘The Bells’ again (see blog gent last year)... of course there were lots of people and former protagonists and banter...
The next weekend saw us re-inaugurating the season at Buktapaktop with some very nice B&W cinema on celluloid by Boris Lehman, ah what a sight for sore eyes, real reel-to-reel cinema with those soft & hard lightings, tickering away, accompanied by Messerli’s Free Arkestra (sadly -1, but chapeau that they continue) - well done the translation of visuals in subdued tones) – 



















time fading in the dark, revisiting bygone



Then had a grand festive meeting with lots of artist for a birthday bash at the chateau Den Brandt, nice to meet people again and then later that week a wonderful work by Ann Veronica Janssens in Gent – freshly installed I-beam polished one side reflecting the said city... HD400... on the Korenmarkt... I’m a bit wary of too many interventions in the city but this one is really a very nice added value one might say.
 A.V. Janssen' HD400 by LL





Later that week in one of my favorite ‘off the beaten track’ haunts – the [by’ro] run by Philippe Braem in Oudenarde – presenting Mohamed Alani, whom we saw in the group show at the combo show in Brussels (Tivoli building Bascule) but here came into it’s own... intervening right from the start with a nonchalant banana peel on a sumptuous baroque portal... setting the stage for what I can only call the ‘intricate banal’... something I’ve been grappling with...so, down my alley like the seemingly streaked bicycle wheel, kicked banana by youthful vandals probably, et the end of a pristine corridor – or, wantonly waving from the closet, a sports jersey, by chance also a track & field shoe stepped on by the presentation table – encounters that set the mind wondering.
Project drawings and more to see... objects which on first view might remind one of some déjà vu, but are distinct – banal but with intent, without being political or analytical, but referring to possible conjectures in whatever direction one might be inclined- leaving the viewer free enough to draw conclusions or not: the clothes piled on the mop handle are there not as a formalist plaything, but because the owner of the clothes desists from buying a closet as long as his right-to-stay procedure is still ongoing... “refugee status” ...once permanent residence is established, there is no need for this sculpture... other than the tower of teapots on a scale – “Al Hadba”, the leaning minaret of the Al-Nuri Mosque recently destroyed in by the Daesh in Mosul... now a pile of baked earth... what matters when matter is transformed from inanimate, empty, to significant weighty – the fact that the grandfather of the artist was a regular in bygone times makes the simple stacking of pots so poignant- even aside the disastrous recent history of the area... one way to deal with it all in a simple & positive way, since rational understanding falls short... “Corner 2” simple enough but tensile – adhering to a corner, cornering, or the “weight of the words”,
A sagging book, or “reunion of eldermen” a gaggle of walking sticks... not much more has to be said, visual understanding is enough... 
It’s very refreshing work – playful but solemn, avoiding spectacle but ponderous enough to skirt the monumental; even though understated in scale - human scale.