Two Exhibitions
dal 11/6/2009 al 29/8/2009
Segnalato da
11/6/2009
Two Exhibitions
S.M.A.K. - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent
The Value of Void presents several of Navid Nuur's spatially remembered works as well as several new works. His research develops by way of a subjective programme of requirements or rules in which intuition plays a key role. On the occasion of the publication of the book Trinity, Carl De Keyzer exhibits some eighty photographs. It is a milestone in the work of Magnum photographer, a triptych on the theme of the omnipresence of power and violence.
Navid Nuur - The Value of Void
13.06.2009 - 02.08.2009
When Navid Nuur (b. 1976, Teheran) talks about his work he often uses terms like ‘clean’ or ‘pure’ or occasionally even ‘warm’. The way in which he relates to material, the space around him and his observations regarding this could almost be described as devout. Through his attention to detail and the careful coordination of the various components of a work or an exhibition the spectator becomes a participant in an ‘internal’ world. Nuur’s work – which at first glance appears to be developed very conceptually – reveals a highly personal approach to image in which the presentation of the question plays a central role. How a certain phrase requires a specific structure for example or how variations in tones of red and blue can evoke different shades of purple for example.
What Nuur shares with the conceptual artists of the sixties is the relationship between concept and form. However in his work form is not simply a result of the idea but develops by way of a subjective programme of requirements or rules in which intuition plays a key role. Navid Nuur says: ‘it is a certainty based on feeling which I can only explain later on. However if you have to rationalize a work in order to justify it , it becomes conceptually dead.’ He uses concepts that are related to a temporary interim situation that places his work between the spectator and what is often an abstract phenomenon such as light, energy, air or ‘remaining/ residual space’. Nuur’s formal idiom and the meaning he attributes to a work are therefore purely part of a process. His work is in fact a depiction of this process and is therefore transitory in almost all of its manifestations. Consequently, it would be better to describe the installations, drawings and objects he creates as ‘thought models’. Which is why he prefers to refer to his works as’ interimodules’ where the word ‘module’ refers to the way of thinking and the actual conceptualising of it and ‘interim’ to the temporary ‘between’, the process aspect of his work
‘The Value of Void’ exhibition in the Kunst Nu-area in S.M.A.K. presents several of Nuur’s spatially remembered works as well as several new works. As regards content, the exhibition is a sort of ‘prequel’ to two of Navid Nuur’s forthcoming exhibitions in the Fridericianum in Kassel and in ‘De Hallen’ in Haarlem. A catalogue of all his work produced so far will be published at the end of the three exhibitions.
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Carl De Keyzer - Trinity
13.06.2009 - 30.08.2009
On the occasion of the publication of the book “Trinity”, Carl De Keyzer (°1958 Kortrijk, BE) will exhibit some eighty photographs in the S.M.A.K. from June 2009 on. It is a milestone in the work of Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer, a triptych on the theme of the omnipresence of power and violence.
The title itself refers not only to the traditional image of the Supreme Power in classical painting, but also, for example, to the code name of the project with which Oppenheimer lead a team of atomic physicists to the production of the first atom bomb. Based on three probing themes, he grabs contemporary power, its senseless violence and worldwide devastation by the hair with oppressive images: Tableaux d’ Histoire, Tableaux de Guerre and Tableaux Politiques. The first tableaux cast a surprising light on the theatrical, that has characterized power since time immemorial and without which it could not exist.
The second perspective shows us violence as a timeless and placeless phenomenon. War appears in an aesthetic of the sublime, although subdued and painful, as glorification, heroism and justification are absent. The third part takes us behind the scenes of political power, which should, when all is said and done, actually be the power of the people: the façade, the lobbying, the back rooms, the haggling.
Image: Navid Nuur
Opening june 12th, 2009
S.M.A.K. - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst
Citadelpark - Ghent
Opening hours
Closed on Monday
Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm
Entrance fees
€ 6: individual visitor
€ 4: groups from 15 persons, under-25s, over-60s, students
€ 1: young people under the age of 26