calendario eventi  :: 

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7/5/2004

Three exhibitions

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

A Retrospective
Vaast Colson
08.05 - 20.06.2004

Vaast Colson (b. 1977, lives and works in Antwerp) is bluffing. He has no choice, because as a young artist he is not yet on solid ground, does not have a leg to stand on, has no monopoly on the truth. On the other hand, the art world apparently presents itself as a realm of unbounded possibilities, in which the artist is free (or doomed) to determine for himself what art and being an artist mean to him. Inevitably, it is in this unlimited freedom and ultimate boundlessness that the origin of Colson's artisthood lies, and of his need to act and create. In constantly changing configurations, Colson tries to mark out boundaries and take up positions. In performances and the installations connected with them, he focuses on the birth of the image, the methodology of visual language and the role of art and the artist. In an often playful and lucid manner, he shatters the constructions that artistic predecessors or art history have built across 'the abyss', and in the same movement produces his own artistic artefacts, roles and identities. These of necessity belong to the order of fantasy and myth and, when they are capable of charming a public, of magic too. One moment he aims for mystification and the next he is the first to undermine the illusion.

Since there are no permanent – let alone universal – truths to act as a starting point, each of Colson's performances or installations develops out of the specific situation in which it arises. He prefers working with a live public and lets his work take shape under real conditions. Despite this improvisational, instantaneous aspect, every action is nevertheless prepared and executed down to the finest detail and verges on the obsessive. The restrictions and possibilities of the context, the limits and boundaries of the given time and space are meticulously and maximally explored, sounded out and incorporated. Colson uses these contextual elements as a powerful lever for the design of his acts. In addition, personification, physical effort and confrontation with a public are elements that define the form. The care with which Colson carries out his actions introduces a tension into his acts and sometimes even gives them a spiritual dimension. On the other hand, the many roles the artist allots himself have nothing to do with the heroic deeds of the heyday of modernism. In one of his installations the slogan 'No more super-heroes' appeared on a skateboard, taken from the Stranglers LP No more heroes, issued in 1977, the notorious year of punk. The roles he plays are neither tragic nor problematic. Some acts are redolent with boredom or have a certain silliness, lacking a clear scenario for the 'performance' of 'artist hood'. Despite his dedication it is not always clear where Colson's acts are leading, and a successful outcome does not count for much. Here we see the artist as a loser, as the mythical antihero.

For Vaast Colson the celebration of SMAK's fifth anniversary is the perfect context in which to resolve his obsessions. Since it is his first museum exhibition, and in addition the museum is taking a festive look back at its first five years and the directorship of Jan Hoet, he has named his exhibition A Retrospective. This title is not only an ironic reference to the usual retrospective exhibitions dedicated to celebrated artists at the end of their career, but also to the fact that, in a museum, art is not only displayed but as far as possible is also conserved for eternity. Since the process aspect and the encounter with a public are so essential to this artist, the immobility of an exhibition is rather a problem – certainly when compared to the directness and rapidity of the concerts he, as a guitarist, occasionally enjoys. He himself also questions the residue of his previous acts and installations. The long, high Kunst nu hall acts as a sort of stockroom for these props and remnants.

In response to the festivities at SMAK, Colson will perform acts in his installation on three successive days (7, 8 & 9 May). To this end he is constructing a wooden platform on top of the remains of his previous installations and performances, which to a certain extent gives the stockroom the appearance of an archaeological site. In addition, this construction enables the artist to mark off his own private space in the exhibition hall, and thus establish a distance between himself and the spectator. During the festivities the artist will after all approach the public as a group, a mass of spectators zapping from one happening to the next. This consequently requires that the action be efficiently directed and designed so as to achieve an effect and wrest magic from the situation.
The artist wants to spend a lot of time in his installation after the festivities too, and reserves the right to transform the space at any time. In this case he will approach the spectator as an individual and will be able to hang about informally amongst the remnants of his activities. This position is much more personal and down to earth. In this atmosphere he will also receive various artists with whom he feels an affinity or whom he admires. He will invite them to do something with the collected material entirely according to their own insight, inspiration and desires.

Vaast Colson's artistic attitude implies that, as soon as an action generates the fixed pattern of a routine, or of a certain craftsmanship, he immediately opts for an alternative method. The construction over the abyss must never take on the air of a fort. Again and again the artist chooses to grope in the dark. This brings its own risks, of course. The Kunst nu space is a personal haven for experimentation.

Practical Information
period: 08.05 - 20.06.2004

price:
euro 5: individual visitors
euro 3,80: groups larger than 15 and concessions (students, under-25s, over-60s, etc.)
euro 2,50: school groups

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12 Signs. Transposed and illuminated (with various indexes)
Sam Durant
08.05 - 05.09.2004

American artists Sam Durant (living in Los Angeles), mixes a variety of media and works on diverse projects. He takes pictures and makes sculptures, drawings and installations, mostly with a conceptual basis. The '12 Signs. Transposed and illuminated (with various indexes)' exhibition only focuses on the illuminated signs in Sam Durant's oeuvre.
In 2002 his work was assembled in the MOCA in Los Angeles and in the Kunstverein in Düsseldorf. During the Venice Biennale in 2003, he exhibited illuminated signs that were hung in unexpected places in the Giardini and the Arsenale. His work was also displayed in the Whitney Biennial in 2004.

Throughout his variety of work, Sam Durant focuses on objects that have an historic, social, political or art history dimension. They all draw attention to aspects regarding the relationship between arts, culture and politics. For example, he made works on Land Art artist Robert Smithson or photographed designer chairs in an almost unrecognisable fashion. To Durant, historical facts are visual material that enables us to understand the present better. His choice of working with illuminated signs originated from an interest in social movements in the USA during the sixties. The way language is used on the picket sings people carry around interests Durant. He appropriates handwritten texts of these pamphlets known from photographs in newspapers and magazines. He chooses texts that were more general and not specifically linked to a certain period or event, such as: 'Tell it Like it is', 'We Are the People', 'No Lie Can Live Forever' or 'Justice'. The texts can be given different meanings in our present time. Another selection criteria, is the fact that they must be handwritten. The texts are then transformed into the industrial format of an electric illuminated sign, as used by commercial companies. The manual character of the text contrasts with the mechanical production. It also refers to the 'manual'; the idea of how a work of art 'should' look. Parallel to this, he makes detailed drawings of the newspaper photographs, thus giving a part of history a new reality. He has the newspaper photographs themselves printed with a wide circulation and spread, they can be taken home by the visitor.

Sam Durant's illuminated signs are exhibited in white, museum-type areas as well as in public spaces. They are easily related to public situations due to the texts' general nature. Everyone finds their own message or reflection in them. In the autumn of 2003, for example, four illuminated signs were displayed in Project Row Houses, a community organisation that also organises exhibitions. The illuminated sings were attached to local wooden houses and resulted in many reactions from local residents.

The S.M.A.K. displays all eleven illuminated signs in a museum context for the first time. The exhibition opens during the weekend in which the museum celebrates its fifth anniversary. As homage to Jan Hoet, Sam Durant will make a new illuminated sign for the S.M.A.K. collection with the text 'Male Chauvinists Beware'. This twelfth work ends the series of illuminated signs. The museum will also be displaying various drawings. Four different posters, which can be taken home by visitors, will be printed, serving as a point of departure for the illuminated signs.

Practical Information
period: 08.05 - 05.09.2004

price:
5 Euro: individual visitors
3,80 Euro: groups larger than 15 and concessions (students, under-25s, over-60s, etc.)
2,50 Euro: school groups

catalogue

Image: a work by Sam Durant

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Open rooms
Juan Uslé
08.05 - 22.08.2004

The oeuvre of Spanish painter Juan Usle (°1954, Santander) is extremely varied. In his abstract paintings he combines a well-considered process with intuitive painting. His work was part of various exhibitions that have been devoted to the art of painting, and could be seen in, among others, the Documenta IX in Kassel. Throughout his career, Juan Uslé went through a variety of style phases. Two criteria have more or less remained the same in his development, namely the actual, practical painting on the one hand and the continuous stream, the transformation that painting brings about, on the other.

Juan Uslé started painting in 1980. His style fits in with abstract expressionism. Yet he simultaneously paints figurative elements that often refer to landscapes and more or less fit in with the romantic tradition. Uslé paints ephemeral descriptions of atmospheric conditions, in semi-transparent layers and saturated, impossible colours. A painter of his level can do nothing but think, be it consciously or subconsciously, about the boundaries of such an approach. In 1987 he left Spain for New York, where everything can be questioned. This move was also the start of an adventure where painting stops being a transparent medium with a vision of the world, to become a field of dialogue. His approach is not conceptual, there is no programme steering the practice. On the one hand, he realises the inadequacy of an old medium in comparison with the increasingly precarious and ungraspable reality. On the other, the conscious and affirmative acceptance of the medium's limitations can create a ritual, a contract, a network of appearances and a possibility to paint. His practice is constructive, it is born in the act of painting and these constructions are filled with contrasts, carried and kept together by a human impulse. Uslé enjoys working with contrasts: thick and thin, stable and fragile, fast and slow, shiny and mat. Founded in an obsessively observed reality, his paintings link various types of abstraction.
He articulates quite precisely, helps the viewer on his way in the labyrinth-type space of the painting, but leaves a lot unspoken. Through major command of the language of form and an almost psychological connection with colour, the painter invites you to look. Uslé also introduces 'duration' in his work, he counters the immediacy promoted by the media via the intensification of the present.

For the 'Open Rooms' exhibition the choice was made to focus on his paintings from the nineties up until his most recent works. The exhibition includes around fifty paintings grouped in six open categories. In the large central room on the top floor, there are twelve vertical works from the 'Soñé que Revelabas' series. These large black canvasses consist of a fine horizontal pattern of lines. Each attempt at pictorial impressions is suppressed. The deep, transparent spaces seem to be readable like texts. Small colour nuances contribute to the spatial tension. The 'Gramática urbana' paintings are based on horizontal and vertical structures that refer to architectural shapes as well as to the movement of form and light. Often in a pattern of parallel stripes, they contain a confrontation of various colours and formal elements. The compositions sometimes seem like an echo of large towns. They offer us static images of movement. The 'Rizoma' series includes more complex compositions with a layer of lines and colours. The canvasses become rhythmic, dynamic spaces, sounding out sensory perception. The 'Eolo (El otro orden)' works can be considered more or less exceptional. They have light tints, a lot of white and the composition is more 'simple' with formal elements on a monochrome background without perspective. Some of these works show an influence of other Spanish painters such as Juan Miró. The categories created by Uslé in which he groups his work are formal. There is however one category, the 'Celibataires', in which he brings together canvasses that do not look alike at all. These 'Celibataires' can be seen as various style exercises, usually of the same size. Throughout the diversity of his oeuvre, Uslé's work speaks of history and the possibilities of the art of painting. In most of his works you can see an abstract image, a realistic depiction as a virtual world.

This exhibition was realised in cooperation with the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. 'Open Rooms' is supported by the 'Arte Espanol Para El Exterior' programme of the Spanish Department of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish Embassy in Belgium.

Practical Information
period: 08.05 - 22.08.2004

price:
5 Euro: individual visitors
3,80 Euro: groups larger than 15 and concessions (students, under-25s, over-60s, etc.)
2,50 Euro: school groups

catalogue

S.M.A.K.
Citadelpark, B-9000 Gent
T: +32 (0)9 221 17 03
F: +32 (0)9 221 71 09

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