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14/12/2012

Jan Van Oost

Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin

Galerie Rolando Anselmi is pleased to announce The Demon Love, the first solo show of Flemish artist Jan Van Oost in the gallery space in Berlin. A selection of his major sculptures from the nineties will be displayed in the space, together with some significant drawings from the "Baudelaire" and the "De Sade-Pasolini" cycles. The artist found inspiration to his expressive language in the symbolism of Wiertz, Spilliaert and Ensor. He perceives the pervasive and imminent presence of death in the life of each one and represents it, especially in his first work, through conceptually minimal metaphors. The drawings themselves seem to be fragments of anatomy, debris of bones, of human remains scattered as if they were within the narrow edges of a coffin. This concept of the end of life, often accompanied by the ritual of pain, is central in his work and he uses it to try to overcome the condition of being mortal, facing it by skilful use of irony and analogies.

Irony is inherent in almost all of his works and a complex ambiguity between horror and seduction, between reality and fantasy, characterizes his sculptural research. The realistic sculptures " Strega" (1999), and "The Knife"(2004), marked with strong humanity like memory, feeling, femininity and sexuality are at the same time, ideal of seductive female beauty and horrifying shapes, scary and intriguing, figures of the timeless confrontation between Eros and Thanatos where beauty is horror, and horror is beauty. Through different media and a dark aesthetic JanVan Oost investigates life and death, viscerally and strongly fascinated by the black holes of our mind, in search of secrets and answers, as he declared: "Art reveals things that are not usually within one’s consciousness range".

Jan Van Oost was born in Deinze (Belgium) in 1961. He lives and works in Ghent. Jan Van Oost starts his career in the mid 80’s with several public exhibitions such as the Gewad Foundation in 1985, the Vereniging voor het Museum in 1986 (Ghent), and the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneve in 1987. At the same time he starts to collaborate with some established galleries such as Xavier Hufkens in Bruxelles, Air de Paris and Albert Baronian in Nice and Paris. The most significant exhibitions in the 90’s are at Giorgio Persano in Turin and at Lucio Amelio in Naples, and his drawings for the Baudelaire cycle were presented at Museum D’Hondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, at NAC-Novara Arte Cultura and Galerie Piece Unique in Paris. He was recently exhibited at Sint Baafskathedraal in a group exhibition curated by Jan Hoet and Hans Mertens.

Performance by ANNE MÜLLER (Cello)

Berlin-based artist and cellist Anne Müller will perform the same evening and provide a live accompaniment to Ragalzi's and Van Oost's shows hosted at Galerie Rolando Anselmi. Apart from her work with classical music, she has also steadily created a reputation for taking this old age instrument to new musical paths, while retaining the warm rich sounds the cello produces. Her research bestows new freedom and new borders upon herself and her instrument, the cello. Loops, songs, landscapes, and acoustic glitches will find their place in her performance and her performance, specially thought for this occasion, will find its place among the dark and almost sacral environment created by the exhibitions' set up, inviting the public to be part of a more complex sensorial and visual experience.

December 15, 2012 | 18h | opening reception

Galerie Rolando Anselmi
Erkelnzdamm, 11-13 (2nd Courtyard, Entrance C, 3rd Floor) - Berlin
opening hours: Wed/Fri. 15.00-19.00, Saturday by appointment.

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