calendario eventi  :: 

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30/11/2006

Lost & Found

S.M.A.K. - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent

Lost & Found
01.12.2006 - 18.03.2007
Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta Kalleinen, Mika Taanila

On the occasion of the Finnish presidency of the European Union, which started this year, at the end of the year the S.M.A.K. is organising an exhibition of work by Finnish artists who work experimentally at the point where video art, film, documentary and visual art meet.

We chose the artist Mika Taanila and the duo Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen for the convincing quality and innovative nature of their work. Although their approaches differ considerably, parallels nevertheless arise that make it interesting to show their work alongside each other. Both will be showing new work for the first time.

Mika Taanila (b. 1965, Helsinki) is an artist who blurs the boundaries between documentary film, avant-garde film and plastic art. Themes that permeate his film work include the artificial urban environment and the futuristic Utopias of modern science. His short films have been screened at more than 200 international film festivals and events. His work has recently found its way to a new audience in the visual art world.
The work of Tellervo Kalleinen (b. 1975, Lohja; lives and works in Helsinki) comprises video art, performance art and artistic interventions, in which she usually creates unusual situations that make possible and elicit creative interaction. Since 2003 she has worked closely with the artist Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (b. 1971, Dresden; lives and works in Helsinki).

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Ricardo Brey
Universe
07.10.2006 - 07.01.2007

S.M.A.K. is for the first time showing 'Universe’. This work by the Cuban artist Ricardo Brey consists of 1004 drawings, ranging from water colour and assemblage to photograph based images. In 'Universe’, Brey has created his own mythological universe. In 99 showcases he unfolds a realm of evolutions and theories, animals and plants, natural elements and their symbolism.

This series is accompanied by a number of works that underpin his reflections on society, cultural diversity and the genesis of the world.

In parallel with the exhibition, this Universe has also published in a 500-page book.

Ricardo Brey (born 1955, Havana) explores how humans relate to nature, how cultures, religions and cultural identity interact and how his own Afro-Cuban origin comes in. Brey grew up in Havana, but moved to Ghent in 1991. He participated in international events such as Documenta in Kassel and Biennales of Sao Paulo, La Habana and Venice. His contribution to the Documenta IX in Kassel (1992) won him international renown.

Brey approaches spaces with total freedom and creates in them places of interaction that are just in the point of construction and destruction. At the moment, together with the “Universe", S.M.A.K is presenting the installation that Brey has made for Documenta IX (1992). In this way the public begins its visit to the exhibition departing from an historical reference to the work of the artist.

'Universe’ links heterogeneous subjects: evolution, various animal and plant species, religion, etc. As a whole, the work is a sort of encyclopaedia about fauna and flora, birds, fish, plants, etc., from the combined perspectives of aesthetics, ethics, religion... In 'Universe’ Brey juxtaposes his individual (mystical) experience of time and images with the great mythological time. This allows him to reflect upon the confrontation of different worlds and traditions. His work bears witness to a great sense of empathy in the poetic faculties of images and objects. Throughout his realisation of Universe, various aspects that were already present in his work, (shapes, media, etc.) are combined with new ideas and recently developed approaches. This creates a resonance in which all the individual works are linked and contain within themselves the memory of other shapes, like an interminable giving and taking.

Together with the exhibition the book of the Universe has been published. The hard cover volume contends the 1004 drawings which are reproduced at the scale of 90%. In this way, the reproductions “slightly differ" from the real drawings—they are “not real reproductions". Special attention is given to the choice of paper, the colour and the arrangement of the images.
This publication is issued by S.M.A.K. and MER. PaperKunsthalle and has been made possible with the support of the Flemish Community and the Cera-foundation.

Parallel to this presentation, S.M.A.K. also presents exhibitions by Peter Downsbrough, Agnes Varda, Philip Metten, Carlos Navarrete and Jan Christensen. We are also showing the exhibition 'Lost & Found’ with work by Finish artists Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Mika Taanila.

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Peter Downsbrough
Focus
07.10.2006 - 14.01.2007

Peter Downsbrough (b. 1940, USA) is one of those artists who, as from the end of the 60s, thoroughly changed the perception of art. He often incorporated written language into his work, which earned him the label of ‘conceptual artist’. However, his work is extremely individual and highly diversified. He uses a wide range of supports and his work includes sculptures, drawings, collages, models, photos, books, music, film and video. A book and a DVD will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.

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Jan Christensen
07.10.2006 - 07.01.2007

BAR-code

The work of the young artist Jan Christensen (b. 1978, Denmark) mainly comprises murals and site-specific works.

In his colourful, room-filling murals he effortlessly combines figurative and abstract elements, and the painterly application of colour with computer graphics and graffiti writing. The result of this mixture of high and low culture is often a visual explosion of forms, colours, decorative patterns and vibrating lines.

His site-specific works, for which he takes the architecture of the space itself as his starting point, display a much more muted range of colours. No bursting colourful explosions, but architectural drawings meticulously sketched on the computer and then mounted on the wall with extreme precision in elegant black, grey and blue.

For BARCODE Christensen will do a site-specific mural based on the architectural drawings of the S.M.A.K. cafe'.

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Agne's Varda
14.10.200 - 21.01.2007

Film

During the 33rd International Film Festival in Ghent, the French film director Agne's Varda, who was born in Brussels, was presented with the Joseph Plateau Lifetime Achievement Award.

The festival screened a retrospective of her most important works as a tribute. In the fifties and sixties Varda was the leading lady of the French Nouvelle vague movement. For her last film, Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2004) she joined the people who search for anything edible in the waste left after a market.

Varda also makes video installations, two of which are being shown at S.M.A.K.. The main focus is on Les Veuves de Noirmoutier. Fourteen widows can each be seen on a separate monitor set up around a projection of a film in which these black-clad women meet on the beach. The visitor can sit down on one of the fourteen chairs and put on the headphones; each set of headphones is connected to one of the monitors and tells the story of one of the widows. As in many of her films, Varda here connects the personal with the collective.

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Carlos Navarrete
07.10... 17.12.2006
CITY-SCAN

Carlos Navarrete (b. 1968, Chile) travels the world as a contemporary explorer who goes on expeditions using his own methods and various media to study such topics as identity and culture.

Navarrete is constantly entering into dialogue with the cities and cultures he seeks out. Using photos, drawings and ephemeral interventions, he views each place he stays through the frame of his own perspective as a traveller. Even when he makes use of several media, his work is always linked to painting, more especially the tradition of geometric abstraction. His photos often include a domino block which has travelled around with him for years. He sees it as a ‘portable painting’ that refers to Malevich’s black square and by which means he tries to position and document the order of geometry in today’s chaotic world.
In Ghent, he will be analysing the stratified landscape of the city on a micro level, reflecting on the relationship between man, art and nature. He is fascinated by the concept of order and chaos, and will try to construct a poetic labyrinth in which the viewer can deliberately get lost and acquire a different view of the space around him and the marking of his own identity. The starting point for this interaction in the city is the ‘garden’, more particularly the principle of the eastern Zen Garden. The results of his observations will take shape in the exhibition, which takes the form of a travel diary.

Image: Ricardo Brey

S.M.A.K.
Museum for Contemporary Art - Ghent, Belgium
Citadelpark 9000 Ghent Belgium
Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
€5: individuals
€3,80: groups from 15 persons, under-25s, over-60s, students
€2,50: school groups
Free for under-twelves, disabled and persons accompanying groups. Special exhibitions excepted.
Admission to the museum is free every Sunday morning from 10 am to 1 pm. There is also a free guided tour for individual visitors at 11 am.

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