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CENTRALE | hall
Pour sa 8e édition, Art’contest (asbl), le concours annuel d’art contemporain ouvert aux artistes résidants en Belgique de 35 ans maximum, s’expose à la CENTRALE for contemporary art.
L’objectif de ce concours consiste à soutenir et à promouvoir la jeune création dans un cadre exigeant et stimulant, de créer un biotope qui favorise les rencontres, l’exposition des oeuvres des artistes et de les confronter avec un jury de qualité et un public dynamique.
Exposition
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La Centrale Electrique
The two video portraits of “MALY”, from the video series “SUDDEN”, are a reflection on time. They question the notion of truths, of metamorphosis and of evanescence.
Here they reveal a birth, on the one hand the face of a woman becoming a mother and on the other her child called Maly gradually emerging. These videos evolve using software designed for this project, and their real time, extremely short, is swollen, denatured, so that the instant that is filmed spreads out over a life, both metaphorically and temporally.
The images generated live, still moving, seem fixed, and each gesture, as rapid and as infinitesimal as it is originally, becomes observable. The experience of the instant is as if suspended but leads to a loss of control, its evolution is perceptible only with difficulty and the images have to be ignored in time, escaping them in order to seek to catch them again.
The videos develop constantly although the electronic equipment is off, as they are predetermined, inevitable, inflexible and irreversible. For “La Centrale électrique”, they last for 23 days 23 hours 50 minutes, closing when the child emerges from its mother, on Sunday 9 January 2011 at 17.50, to begin life outside the mother’s womb, counting time remaining and time passing.
The video “ANA” celebrates an anniversary, two children blowing out the
candles on a cake. Behind this apparent warmth there is mounting tension and it closes when the candles are blown out, when the child in the video “MALY” is born on Sunday 9 January 2011.
These three portraits are an illusory attempt to control and to dominate time, everywhere but imperceptible, an observation of our inability to understand, to accept the complexity of this primary phenomenon, a vanity.
Duration: 23 days 23 hours 50 minutes
Exposition
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CENTRALE | hall
BRUSSELS Unlimited is a unique opportunity to discover the collection of Contretype type the result of 15 years of artists in residence, which is exhibited in its entirety. On the program, 23 Belgian and international artists, more than 170 works, photographic images at the intersection of their own artistic research and the encounter with a city and its inhabitants. The dialogue between the works are grouped into several sections: territory and landscape, ruins and the passage of time, strolling, meeting the other, interiors, autobiography.
Simultaneously, the Espace photographique Contretype offers the complementary exhibition “Seven women in residence.”
www.contretypes.org
7 € Combined ticket with Contretype
Exposition
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CENTRALE | box
There is nothing difficult about it: Things that turn are fascinating to look at. Even things that hold only the promise of turning are fascinating. We are all turning, moving around, but without feeling it. Yet the power of attraction of things that turn we do feel. So simple, so uncontrollable. A circle is powerful and circumscribed, once completed starting anew.
I just dive in, and starting is the most difficult. After the start everything else just follows. I assume that I can just do what I want, so I make images that are of interest to me. I hope that it will be interesting to the viewer too, but cannot predict it. By making a start, thus by effectively determining that you are starting something, a path is created. And on that path I seek the most satisfying route. There is a plan, but it is not thought through, and sometimes the connection is hard to find, but then things come together, because I myself am the unifying thread that runs through my work. The ideas in my head are also limited, however varied they may seem, so everything always comes together. Such as a circle that is always completed to start anew.
The ‘new windmills’ is a series of works that all rotate and that are painted or daubed. Without an endpoint. The layers of paint/material that are thus created always cover the previous layer, making a work brand new once again. The layer of make-up that, as it were, becomes the future skin, then dermis, and then sub-dermis. The starting point for this series of works was the short story by Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece. A story about a painter who in his search for the perfect painting remains stuck for years working and reworking on the same painting. He improves, retouches and adds paints until at the tentative end there is a lump of material, which in his eyes approaches perfection. Two old friends who visit his studio understand nothing and even claim that they cannot see anything at all. A kind of formless mist.
The power of this story is that the truths of the painter and of his old friends are opposed. The painter “lived” his search, while his friends stood still. This made me realize that the search is tremendous but that it must not be made to please “friends”. If the result of the search is good and pursued to the end then they will come to understand it, later.
Exposition
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CENTRALE | box
Marcus Kleinfeld’s eponymous new video work ‘A rose is not a rose’ is presented as an enigmatic series of still images underscored by sound effects as well as text and spoken words of human and voice-software generated origins. In it, the artist – last year’s recipient of the BCC Award – deconstructs something akin to a psychological journey from found photographs of the last decades of the 20th century. The resulting dissonances and tensions add a sense of alienation to the almost educational-looking imagery of empty buildings and laboratories, or human beings performing mundane daily activities like under a microscope.
Further shown in the exhibition is ‘Audit’, another video work similarly concerned with ideas of alienation and separation and solely consisting of running text on black background and an accompanying voice-over of a mysterious group therapy session.
Three wall installations, a painting-collage showing a large picture of a rose as well as two framed series of multiple prints complete the exhibition. They deal with similar aspects of human relationships and society and give an impression of the artist’s distinct work, which has long been concerned with the psychological and physical effects that systems – political, economical and social – have on individuals and groups.
Marcus Kleinfeld (1979, Berlin) studied at Chelsea College of Art in London, Villa Arson in Nice and Goldsmith College in London. Upcoming exhibitions in 2014 will be at Kunstverein Maschinenhaus Essen (with Eli Cortinas) and Kunstverein Cuxhaven. The artist lives and works in Berlin.
Exposition
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La Centrale Electrique
In a first monographic exhibition in Belgium, prior to its presentation to the Museum for African Art of New York, sculptures, installations, photomontages and videos immerse the audience in the disturbing universe of Jane Alexander, a major South African artist. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, Jane Alexander casts a critical eye over the political situation in her country during and after the apartheid period; in a subversive manner she denounces the violence of segregation, colonialism and, more generally, the domination of certain minorities.
Of a truly international stature, the artist has exhibited in numerous biennial art festivals (Dakar, Havana, Venice, Lyon), participated in Africa Remix, at the Bamako Encounters – African Photography in Mali and many exhibitions particularly in Spain, Finland and the USA. Winner of the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Prize in Germany in 2002, her works are held in many museum and private collections.
Exposition
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B-Gallery
Installation
“The exhibition Tired Matter questions a mechanism of dramaturgy. By degradation, deletion, twisting, that the initial material, the source of inspiration, acquires a new significance. It is in a process of attrition, that images, documents enjoy a second chance. Critical remains, witnesses of society”.
Exposition
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B-Gallery
Installation
In Mathieu GARGAM, Noé GRENIER and Sophie VALERO’s exhibition, the works find common ground in their shared evocation of analogue and digital mediums. More specifically, they evolve at the heart of the transitions, chemical and electrical trips back and forth between these different formats. This flow primarily questions the meaning, thinking and context that a format will undoubtedly provide its subject with. The goal of these intersections is not nostalgic, but rather an opportunity to think about our image-related education. It is also a chance to look more closely at our relationship with formats and media in the internet age and its manifestations which have different ways of shaping our use of images and knowledge.
Exposition
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B-Gallery
Installation
“Cécile IBARRA’s newest body of work crosses and merges technological developments of the past century with the ruins of an indeterminate future era. Ongoing investigations of recorded sounds and images from Crimea and Belgium are means to develop this notion of crossing and at the same time bridge distinct regions and histories. Être à l’ouest at B-Gallery features a new collection of photographic slides, selections of a film (from a work in progress), an audio piece made in collaboration with sound artist Vincent MATYN, and a series of textile banners architecturally installed throughout the gallery. IBARRA gives special attention to cultivating an awareness of time and territory, and in her work it is manifested not only in the subjects she brings to light, but also through her chosen methods of production and presentation.” – Marianna MARUYAMA
Exposition
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B-Gallery
Installation
The work of Hélène MOREAU has as its starting point an examination about the notion of conception, of construction. The artist reflects on the representation of the internal logic of a constructed form, an issue she is interested in at a time when we are less able to access the workings of the objects that surround us. Drawing and sculpture, as the transition from one to the other, are her favoured tools, both during the work stages and in the final form. It is often in this toing and froing between methods that her pieces take shape and that spurs her interest in the installation.The forms presented are often a reconciliation between or juxtaposition of the imaginary and the rational.
Exposition
