Season kick-off, Covid-wise

 Insecurity was still very much in the air when September rolled in and it was not so clear what was going to happen to the season's openings... But  we began with a small and sympathetic show of local talents at Watermael-Boisfort, leafy suburb and pleasant, easily distanced visit to intimate, personal works: to with Carine Van Erps, whom we have been following for some time and who refuses to follow any trends but her own heart... Often in connection with nature, and often with relatively minimal interventions and gestures... Here too she added ( or rather subtracted) from what was already there... Natural forms suggesting images, enhancing theses and laying them onto a conducive/ conductive base, literally, copper coils generating a sort of static tension... Simply effective, presented in a boite-en-valise and transportable to any site... Where the context takes over no doubt, but the work stands on it's own... A great opener I found, with positive energy...

 Next up were Marc Rossignol and Marie Cloquet opening proceedings at A.Gentils Gallery... Entre deux was not only Marc's double-dexterous drawing/painting, aquarelle in this case, but also the two shows juxtaposed... Cloquet's finely shaded drawings of Aleppo soaps (halab) and the intricate colourful vibrancy of Marc's mesh-mesmerising mental tapestries, forcing the eye to oscillate between interpretations of space constantly, while at the same time being straightforward and methodical... Intricate like the text-decorations in the middle east, playing profusely with the images that are mot allowed to be shown but suggested... So too do we have to surmise where the next soap bubble might come from now the famous historic town is reduced to rubble...

 (Die badewannen von habe ich nicht gesehen) well somewhat later... Didn't manage the vernissage... But the didn't really matter... The show is a series of versions of a template from Kaldewei Badewannen, probably because it sounds exotic, but perhaps because I've ssen quite a few of things inspired by banality... Sometimes a new take can be refreshing, and the trouvaille " Kinderpncho" comes close, but does not really surpass the yuk-yuk stage and reminds one of a lazy afternoon at Fifty-Fifty... Or not even...

 Another careful emergence was a small group show at Factor 44 (yes the old name has surfaced again but it's no longer the place of yore) young talents with some commendable work, while Harry Heirmans presented a small archive offering in the front (red) room harking back to the "Qurantaine" space that was a precursor back in the mid nineties... A good combination of rear view forward striving...

 More futuristic retrospective to be had at Knokke, with Schmalzigaug at R. Van de Velde's and Jessica Lynn Lens at the Scarpoord, but will comment on these elsewhere...(nl blog) 

 And then of course -closer to home- the re-launch of museum operations with material from the archive I had been working on... Included in two sections: Mail Art and Monoculture...  While the small archive presentation of Mail Art pieces selected from existing collections is a pleasant browse-banter, the Monoculture show is quite a marathon, covering a very wide area of recent end fairly recent issues on domination and subjectivity when it comes to cultural interpretations, the use and misuse by the powerbrokers and the reactions that go with it all... Very wide ranging and intricate but also hard to swallow in one go... So best visited more than once perhaps... Or at least that is my own first impression... Even just the small presentation of the archive fragment I have been dealing with is subject to a doctoral investigation by a student from the ULB, and is only a small corner of the archive as a whole, and that sort of fragment is repeated numerous times... Some would say ambitious, others might find it not selective enough, with not enough highlights or detailed zoom-in instances... Hard to tell...

 The presentation of another dear departed friend Nicole van Goethem is a well balance overview, and a breather... Simply presented in a number of tables in a decor that could have come from one of the animated films she's famous for... Upstairs an interesting presentation of artist books from the CRAP section of the academy: a very nice selection of books by Dieter Roth, one of my heroes, again juxtaposed with a young talent Rein Dufait, and up at the top a NICC presentation of CCinq/Cvijf/CFive with a subdued but fine selection of works by Kohei Yoshiyuki, Nicholas Leroy, Shigeko Kubota and Patrick Carpentier... 

So, lots to see, maybe best in smaller bits, (trying is also the fact that due to Covid 19 it's gauntlet-running and time slot regulated... No cafeteria, no socializing..). Makes it more attentive and focussed, but a bit dry... Depends.. Sometimes it's not so bad to take it easy, find time, take time... In these strange times...

 Another trouvaille was a show tucked away in Oudenaerde, per chace that i got an invite during the museum relaunch... In a beautiful art-deco house ( garage of) in the Gevaertsdreef... Ellen Pil created some intreguing combinations with relatvely simple materials, but neatly presented, surreally functional... Wooden presentationpanels, paint sprayed in part, neons, repetitions and variations re-locating the view each time... So becoming part of the refurbishment of one's own attitude...  Associations which don,t quite, but then do fit, matching schemes that don't... The video of her handling a block of wood close to or on the horizon makes the point.   Well. 
 
With quite some expectations we visited Netwerk wher Laure Provoost had gathered a gaggle of friends and then combined with an associate expo in which Annick Nölle was participating... A multi-story story exhibition with rooms, nooks, crannies, basement pools and such... But somehow not quite what it could be...

 The effect of the Provoost show in the museum  was not replicated... Not sure why, and in the end Annick wasn't there, being less than satisfied with the result... Which we tend to agree with... More jumble than astonishment...  So that's that then...

 Just to mention honourably - (see also dutch blog) a show of recent paintings by Rufus Michielsen... Always a sight for sore eyes, a small but potent show off the beaten track at he Wilrijk Academy, part of a circuit of off-track interventions, of which Dennis Tyfus bonked the bongo on some poor sod's head in Merxem of all places!

 Was sort of geared up to become involved in various activities myself... With some amount of enthusiasm and effort... Only to be slowly shot down in stages... Restrictions rising faster than one. An keep up and resulting in yes, another lock down... Short lived season...


more soon

Grande Dame Palais

Trips and travel had been reduced to a minimum since early in the year - only the most essential there and back, if even - the borders were closed for quite a while - carefree jaunts into nowhere quite out of the question… That is why this little investigative trip was such a breath of fresh (well, hot) air: it had been a while since an excursion like this: Avoiding the main arteries we headed down due south form the border, already taking a wrong turn and semi-lost, which is exactly the way we like it… short stop at a quiet Cateau en Cambresis for a croissant and brioche, and on towards Paris along small departmental roads, stopping briefly at Guise - agreeing that this was well worth an extra trip in the future…

But the heat was on and after Laon we stayed on the N2, the old imperial road, being turned into a highway bit by bit… a pity since the agreeable meandering between shady trees and through sleepy villages has been replaced by stress-chasing on frying-pan asphalt framed by cement barriers and beating sunshine: rows of long-distance lorries that want to avoid paying Peage on the highways… in short, even the French countryside is going to the dogs…

We try not to dwell on that and enter Paris through the gauntlet of the market stalls on the boul Clichy, heading for the quieter area around the Place de Ternes - for it is around those parts we need to be: I had been sent a radio fragment by a friend with an interview about the renovation of the ‘Grand Palais’ - Chis Dercon explained how he had discovered the artist now resident in the vast hall at a small gallery in the early nineties… Frank Scurti did a small show together with François Curlet in the ‘inexistent’ hole-in-the wall place in Antwerp some thirty years earlier… a surprising little flashback I decided I wanted to investigate further… I had come across Scurti in the magazines a couple of times but had not followed his career - nor of any other acquaintance of that time… Dercon was by now a bit of a star curator and the others were not doing badly, whereas I was still doing what I had been doing then: investigating possible leads to new insights… but with a strong nostalgic twist - going for the archival rather than the brand new… So it was also logical that I wanted to see the Grand Palais before it was closed for an overhaul… Personally, I tend to dislike today’s trend to have to pimp up all the old institutions, messing up their interiors at exorbitant prices, giving them ridiculous catchy new names and turning the cultural experience into a disneyland fantasy… (our local more than adequate art history museum is still a messy construction site and financial sink-hole many years after promised completion…)

 I wanted to see the Grand Palais without too much clutter before the renovations… I had never had the opportunity to see it properly - remembering an occasion where I looked up to the fantastic cupola only briefly while installing a sticky-letter sentence by Laurence Weiner during one of the Fiac’s - between stressing around… Here was an opportunity to see the garand old dame ‘in the flesh’ - and well worth it. Aside from a long string of (found) objects hanging from the central apse, the space was empty save for a scattering of ‘bureaux’ in a restricted area near the opulent staircase - giving it a theatrical feel: performance ongoing, arrested, considering… Scurti himself was not there and the activity space was quiet save for an assistent/invitee sweeping up some bits & pieces from the previous intervention… so it was a perfect moment to consider the space and what’s in it rather than being entertained by some artistic activity… Built at the tail end of the belle époque, it’s rather manneristic art nouveau elements are nonetheless prime examples of the industrial production of wrought-ironwork - Eifel tower and bridges nearby making the era apparent - one of the las remaining ‘crystal palaces’ - and upon entering a feeling of being transported back to a copper engraving of the vast hall with small figures scattered about - quite unique, and one had the feeling the visitors too were slightly speechless… the occasional muttering of someone who could not appreciate the moment: “they couldn’t think of what to do with the place and invited an artist who doesn’t know what to do with the space… (and that with taxpayers money no doubt)” - far from it -

Scurti’s minimal intervention of bits & bobs just right to give a presence to the vast space while leaving the space itself uncluttered and free for the light-show of alternating sun & clouds and vista’s that become apparent only after moving around a bit… there was a circuit of information panels for those that wanted to brush op on the palace’s history - form grand exhibition heyday to hospital and convalescence clinic during and after the great war… But it was the space ‘soi même’ that was on show… one could climb the cascading staircase for different vantage point of the hall as well as the intervention by Scruti: he had barricaded a part with apple-crate liners, making for a viewer-performer separation quite apt to the space - one could observe from different vantage points the goings-on (or lack of) and consider the clusters of activity-bureaus - one for woodwork, cutting panels, the other for wire and mesh studies, a beureau de chippotage and a collection of trinkets to be considered - centrally located a plinth-refurbishing area in which large pieces of décollage posters (bluebacks) were reformulated into “socles d’air” - cloudy-like patterns folded into cubical structures… and a table of exposition en cage - much like the Palais itself; caged art, arrested like colourful exotic birds for the amusement of the bourgeoisie - netting hung from the banisters denoted price ranges - the variability of value - seemingly a barometer of the current crisis - free entry with guided visits at around one euro - as opposed to the exorbitant prices demanded for regular exhibitions- this being a work i progress rather with oneself as protagonist… What will become of the grande old dame? Hopefully the renovations are in fact restorations and the many exquisite elements are saved: the terrazzo floors, the brass bannister-railings, even the irregularities of the stucco on the walls, now catching shadows of dust, should be retained - and use of modern materials avoided altogether… but yes, given today’s penchant to ‘modernise’ everything I fear it well become a figment of it’s former self with the more spectacular elements highlighted with difficult to replace hand-made craftsmanship thrown out… perhaps here the aspect of using recuperated material is intentional; though it is well within the vocabulary of the artist - it is still a statement perhaps to not replace but re-use…

 Normally Paris is pretty good a retaining original elements, but one does not have to wander far to see the onslaught of the mass-produced plastic rubbish packaged in coveted trade-marketing names on the Champs d’Elysée to realise that there are more and more generations out there that have no feeling with basic materials but for whom ‘look’ is all… and longevity a four letter word… kinky lighting and repetitive beats whipping up an ‘experience’ rather than the calm and collected consideration of silence and emptiness… so in many ways this was a unique moment to view the cavernous Grande Palais in it’s own time, no piped music, lasershow or spectacular ‘event’ - just it’s timeless self, with the humble presence of the artist as conduit: reason for coming inside an empty hall ‘with nothing to see’…

 Of course we also took some time to enjoy Paris in a short touristy sort of way, and had a look around the Seine, Invalides, Tour Eifel, Arc de Triomphe and all that - of course the café crème and the croissants, the people watching from corner café at the market, the boulevards with early leaves - fall being precipitated by the extreme heat of global warming - another reminder of the fragility of it all… heading back out of the city through market stalls full of plastic wares from China, riding the waves of automobile haste back to the slightly less exasperated roads to the north, stopping this time at the wondrous mediaeval town of Laon and its cathedral perched high: by now the heat was such that one could easily mistake the moment as being in Aix-enProvenice rather than these northern climes… Phew…

suspended suspension

been sitting on fragments for ever so long - not quite knowing what to do with them, - every time I thought, well this is a good one for the blog it got sidelined, and then of course it all got shoved due to the corona crisis and all that ( one might think that's a perfect moment to blog- being stuck at home - but nothing further from the truth... more to do than before even...)
so
by way of redressing - a potpourri of impressions perhaps...

the ongoing rock seed situation... more on that later

Yoan horizon

Fascinating exhibition though perhaps edgy event horizon is a matter of conjecture: how is it then that the written word enters it’s new age of oscillating letters projected on prepared pages rather than heavily smudged with ink on pulped trees… and where the pages turn other images of this story or another animate the landscape only just perceived, whittling away at what you thought was stable… no thoughts are scurrying all over all the time, why not literature?

by contrast the reductions of ball-point pen interventions in classic (penguin) paperbacked books: they become as abstract and variable in interpretation as the electronic counterpanes displayed on the other tables - and the hand painted graphics on standard Nepali licence plates, along with the typical shop sign saying just the opposite: words without meaning in that slightly festive curvature used to give a statement somewhat more flair…

Textile too becomes tactile context woven in and out the meaning of the wooly phrase provided in different colours / wove and weft combinations of two strands together… communication that can keep you warm from the sharp mountain wind, for a while at least, while you consider the meaning of the statement at hand…

Same with the narrative looking figures - purportedly involved in significant handlings that we are supposed to recognize or at least interpret - correctly is another matter - books become live things, creatures reinventing themselves / seemingly - but controlled by program (in this case at least… beams reading QR codes to calculate which page you’re on… still regognizable, as was Gutenberg’s wooden letter (later lead etc) at some point… but here we are at the threshold, that point of no return when the vision takes over and even the prototype becomes obsolete in the wink of an eye…

sweepstakes.

all the associations still don’t make a coherent image, but relay the gist. 

Invisible white noise (until moray reveals it) 

unreadable black text (until light strikes it at a angle…) 

we must prepare our tools.