calendario eventi  :: 

X

15/3/2012

Two exhibitions

Galerie van der Mieden, Brussels

Hamish Fulton

Hamish Fulton characterises himself as a ‘walking artist’. Fulton’s time as a student at St Martin’s College of Art in London (1966-68) and his journeys in South Dakota and Montana in 1969, encouraged him to think that art could be ‘how you view life’, and not tied necessarily to the production of objects.
He began to make short walks, and then to make photographic works about the experience of walking. At this time, and subsequently, his practice was influenced by an unusually broad set of interests including the subject of the environment and the culture of American Indians. In 1973, having walked 1,022 miles in 47 days from Duncansby Head (near John O’Groats) to Lands End, Fulton decided to ‘only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks.’ Since then the act of walking has remained central to Fulton’s practice. He has stated ‘If I do not walk, I cannot make a work of art’ and has summed up this way of thinking in the simple statement of intent: ‘no walk, no work’.
Although Fulton experiences the walk itself, the texts and photographs he presents in exhibitions and books allow us to engage with his experience. He says: “My art has to do with specific places and particular occurrences which are not present in the gallery, and the information I give is minimal. My hope is that a separate image will be formed in the observer’s mind, based on that which my work imparts.” Fulton doesn’t seek to distort the landscape: he only seeks to walk across it.
The visible part of his work relies on artefacts he creates after the hike: wall paintings, pictures, drawings or gouaches, that all testifies of his physical experience. Every image that he makes includes some geographic or chronologic indications. His observations have something in common with ‘explorers’ or ‘scientists’ stories, but the posture that he embraces since the beginning is the one of an assumed artist that makes him one of the pillars of conceptual art (with Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, On kawara, Jan Dibbets or Richard Long).
His largest exhibition to date, “Walking Journey”, was held in Tate Britain in 2002.

------

Marc Nagtzaam
STUDIO N°04

Marc Nagtzaam fills his drawings with strict patterns made up of graphite-gray, sketched webs of crosshatching, stripes, or spots. His drawings often take up the entire page and appear almost impenetrable. The use of a personal handwriting, which marks so many artists’ drawings, is almost entirely absent from Nagtzaam’s work. He has said that ‘a neutral image with a certain closedness’ is precisely what he is seeking to achieve. In his work, the act of drawing plays a more important role than th eperson who carries out the action: ‘the work of creation is visible, but the work actually generates itself’.
Additionally, Nagtzaam is not very interested in the reasons for creating any particular drawing: ‘it is more important to know or feel that there is a certain sense of will behind it, within a framed space. I’m trying trying to find representations of a concrete reality, as well as those that can only be realized as drawings’. This idea is expressed in his use of scraps of text in some of his drawings and in his titles. They stand alone and offer little help in interpreting the works.
While drawing usually implies that graphic marks generate meaning, the reverse is true with Nagtzaam’s work: he strips the marks of their meaning. Nagtzaam makes it impossible to conclusively interpret his works, and, for precisely this reason, seems to wish to penetrate into a deeper layer of meaning. The personal act of drawing brings into being a place where both Nagtzaam and his public can dwell. ‘The drawings are like empy spaces, parallel to the world’, he says; ‘I try to create a place that is not clearly defined’

Terry van Druten, 2007
(text from catalogue Drawing Typologies).

Image: 31 Walks, 1971-2010, digital print, ed. 50, 67 x 62,5 cm (framed), full text: Walking, coast to coast, coast to river, river to coast, river to river / A walked line unlike a drawn line can never be erased / Walking into the distance beyond imagination / 31 Walks 1971 - 2010

Galerie van der Mieden
Pourbusstraat 15, B-2000 Antwerp
Open: Wed - Sat 14 – 18h

stampa

permanent link