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1/11/2007

A Group show

CCNOA Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Bruxelles

Site-specific installation and video works

Site-specific installation by Ward Denys (main space), a large, site-specific wall work by Tilman (project room) and video works by Yolande Harris and Monique Thomaes (landing).

The art of Ward Denys covers a wide field of media: sculpture, photography and installation. Through a visual language that is quintessentially minimalist, the artist addresses notions of physical and mental experience, topography and memory. In CCNOA Denys has created The complete video exhibition set, an installation comprising a monumental black box and a series of small gadgets (pencils, postcards and tape). The complete video exhibition set constantly shifts the boundaries between the inside and the outside, the natural and the artificial. A window extending towards the exterior of the gallery space assumes the role of a video wall; in the house, facing the gallery, an old super 8 movie of a child is playing. Just as the image is being spatially deferred and in this way is widened and opened up, the anonymous video image with regards to its meaning awaits the interference of the viewer.

The complete video exhibition set illustrates Denys’ interest in architecture. It identifies the development stage as the basic site of creativity: the air shafts and the portal of the black box are made, as if temporarily, out of cardboard. The accompanying series of gadgets draw from the same logic. As working tools they play an integral part in this set for video exhibition design. Ward Denys was born in Izegem (Belgium) in 1975. He studied at K.A.S.K. in Ghent and later on in H.I.S.K. in Antwerp. Ward Denys has had solo exhibitions at STUK in Leuven and gallery Jan Colle in Ghent. He has participated in group exhibitions at the Centre of Visual Arts in Rotterdam and Croxhapox in Ghent. As an exhibition designer, Ward Denys was involved in Gaude succurere vitae – Jan Fabre at SMAK in Ghent and Africa Remix in Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.

In the new CCNOA project room, Tilman (*1959, Munich, Germany) presents a site-specific wall work and a new multiple, entitled 12 Colors For Brussels. Tilman’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Europe and The United States since 1989. His work is included in private, corporate and public collections. (also see www.lookawry.com)

After living in the Netherlands for twenty years. Belgian artist, Monique Thomaes has been working in Berlin since 1998. For the last years, hoever, she has been dividing her time and work between Antwerp and Berlin. After completing a visual arts degree (sculpture and installation) in The Hague, she studied education and teaching at the Academy for Visual Arts in Rotterdam and thereafter worked in Rotterdam in adult education. In 1988, she moved to Berlin. This move had a major impact on her work: it is reflected in a transition from sculpture to spatial installations.

Through diverse courses of further education and studies and experiments, her work has expanded into the fields of photographic, slide, light, and video installations. In Berlin, she participated in various group projects, organized numerous projects in the public space, and participated regularly in “Art in Public Spaces” competitions. The Berlinische Galerie (Museum for Modern Art and Photography in Berlin) has bought several works. Through a scholarship granted by the Berlin Senate, she has been able to produce a catalogue of her Berlin work. It bears the title “de passage – monique thomaes”. Various Berlin authors contributed texts for this catalogue Along with these activities, she worked for five years as a Guest Professor at the Berlin Universität der Künste (formerly Hochschule der Künste).

In this same period, she produced her first video works. Her video work can be seen as a perception of/reaction to/ spaces, light, time and movement. Meditative, slow, poetic works alternate with works in which image and sound are transformed into dynamic choreographies through the use—and misuse—of montage techniques. The works are showed as large-scale projections or distributed among a variety of monitors. They respond to the viewer and to the space in which they are shown. (see also www.mthomaes.com ). At CCNOA, Thomaes presents her video work plaatsen/lieux/spaces/orte 1995/2007: A camera is statically pointed toward a large room. Gradually and successively the camera’s aperture is opened.

Initially, the picture in the monitor reveals merely a narrow slit of light located at the lower edge, in appearance somewhat similar to a drawing placed upon a dark background. Slowly but surely the line fills out to a re-cognizable room volume, until ultimately in a glistening white this figure loses both its dimensions and contours and is reduced to an empty surface. An opening and a closing-up of the room/image to vision, a gentle process. In contrast to the newer, time-orientated video works with their insisting rhythm or repetitions, Thomaes’ room creations are slower, more bore-ing, and more poetic. The processes of visual disintegration are also more sensible. Instead of using slices, lengthenings, and accelerations, she works with gentle transitions and transitional zones.(Angelika Stepken in: “the passage – monique thomaes” 1998)

Opening 2 november 2007

CCNOA Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art
Blvd Barthelemylaan 5, Brussels
Free admission

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