Tag Archives: past

Tsubo Niwa

Tsubo Niwa

25.03 - 06.05.23

Romy Streep

Tsubo Niwa gives a clear insight into the definition of a garden and its potential.
On the one hand you’ve got niwa, meaning “garden”. On the other, tsubo. One meaning of tsubo is an area equal to two tatami mats or about 3.3 square meters. Most Tsubo gardens are small, some only a few square meters, but the implication of this definition is that the tsubo garden is very small. So one way to think about the tsubo garden is in terms of its size. A second meaning of tsubo brings a new dimension to the garden. In this case tsubo means a vessel, usually ceramic, such as a large water jug.
Now we see the tsubo garden not just as a tiny garden, but a three-dimensional space, a volume that is held between the walls of surrounding rooms. So in this case, the Tsubo garden is contained inside a building, like a jewel in a box. There is a third way to write Tsubo that brings the garden out of a purely physical definition and in the realm of the spiritual. There is a belief, in most countries influenced by Chinese culture, in Ki or “life energy”. A force that flows through the body. And along its lines of flow there are special points. In Japanese these points are called, tsubo. Here in I found the true definition of “my garden”. A place to take a moment, a breath.
Hidden between the noisy streets of Brusselles lays my garden. Made from wool and ceramic.

Works

Interstice

Interstice

25.03 - 06.05.23

Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen

What is in-between?

Interstice is a reflection on what is within. A room in a room, inside the wall is a space; the space inside is the place for reflections, space for thoughts.
Transparent and elusive, this installation has the potential to render absence noticeable, to render emptiness tangible.

In the Japanese language Ma is an “aesthetic principle meaning “emptiness” or “absence.” It is the space between objects, the silence between sounds, or the stillness between movements. The term describes both time and space, and is much more than a “lack” of something. The emptiness is, in fact, a palpable entity¹”.


¹ Lanki, Colleen. “間: an aesthetic of space-time”, ricepaper magazine, 7 February 2013, https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2013/02/間-an-aesthetic-of-space-time/

Works

Kaspar DeJong

Kaspar Dejong

°1995 in Maastricht, NL, lives and works in Amsterdam

Kaspar Dejong earned his master's degree from the Sandberg Institute in 2021. After completing his BA (minor in Critical Studies) at the Willem De Kooning Academy in 2017, he exhibited his final project "Traffic Gaze" at the DSM Art Collection. His work was recently shown at Art Rotterdam, Ballroom Project Antwerp, Kunsthal Gent and was nominated for the Slijuters Prize 2021. He is currently completing a residency program in Berlin at Raum24. Kaspar Dejong's work is in the semiotic tradition of investigating and exploring signs and symbols as an important part of communication. "I tend to reuse existing images and objects from my everyday environment and deconstruct these objects and images in such a way that their signals lose their meaning and/or their authority and original function is questioned." (Dejong on his work) The themes Dejong addresses spring from a fascination with the obvious, the everyday, and with the small beauties of the world. They are processes in which the ravages of time penetrate a man-made structure or system.

Works

Harold Lechein

Harold Lechien

Mark Brand
06.01 – 05.02.22

Mark Brand is a hybrid body of work associating an artistic production with a promotion by Harold Lechien

exploiting the language of branding, then used as artistic material. The heart of the installa- tion is a video bringing together the artworks and a series of messages, logos and derived

objects used in a narrative process that makes the brand oscillate between artistic discourse and a commercial product. It reveals an emotional relationship to these products, to their equivocal status in our lives, and to their distribution.

Works

Charlotte Van Geert

Charlot Van Geert

Good Luck
29.01 – 05.03.22

What you see is not what you get Charlot Van Geert turns things upside down, figuratively speaking. She shakes up our unshakeable faith in objects and matter. By stripping objects of their seemingly obvious meaning, she creates new contexts, humorous situations and critical reflections on the objects and art with which we surround ourselves.

As a sculptor, she deals subversively with the materials traditionally given to her. In doing so, she not only challenges their reality, but also her own role as an artist. From working with less 'high' materials such as cardboard, polystyrene foam or PU foam, to the connection between the 'correct' material and the 'appropriate' look (bronze water levels, polystyrene foam lamps): Van Geert likes to put us on the wrong track.

She plays a game with design and the functions of objects: is it a utilitarian object or is it art? If a candlestick is art, can you burn a candle in it? As soon as that question arises, it also deals with the sacredness of art: does something still have artistic value when it can be manipulated, can get dirty, can fall down? There is no need to fear fingerprints: those of the artist are often present, also in bronze reliefs, in which the traces of the kneaded wax model are still clearly visible. It is as if Van Geert is deliberately wiping her proverbial feet of the high status of art - also literally, with her bronze doormat or six-pack can holder, and by elevating other everyday objects to artistic heights. By doing so, she also takes them out of their comfort zone: her idiosyncratic techniques, for example, destroy the apparent, proud inviolability of bronze.

Works

Justine Grillet

Justine Grillet

Puppet Factory
17.03 – 16.04.22

Throughout my practice I’ve mostly been working around three topics: Theatre, Structure & Performance, explains my idea of working with different scenes from a play. To create a stage where figures can perform and dance. For this, I use theories from fictional stories that I consider as truth and applies them in my work. By playing with a non-physical world, I feel like I can question the role of a performer and the meaning of his performance. This means that creatures living in this particular world can be drawn, written down, or become a piece of sound. These non-physical creatures or monsters suggest figurative work. They do not exist in the real world but in words, memories, and stories, they are present. After this process some of them become physical beings and they’re growing into characters with a personality.

The relationship between sound and object. This has been one of my main concerns in the last years. They can be compared to an archaeological sound archive. I record all sorts of sounds in my atelier, from ceramic rattles to banging metal. My way of working with sound is an experimental and spontaneous process. I combine the sound of handcrafted objects with the sound of electronic devices such as a synthesizer and this by implementing the device in a sculpture. It’s essential for me to see how the elements work together and how they function as an arrangement.

‘In ‘The Book of Imaginary Beings’, Borges comments on all kinds of mythical creatures in a sly and humorous way. It is full of abstruse references and lots of fun. Something I want to keep in mind during my process. These stories can lead me to create my own creatures. According to this, drawings are and will remain an important element in my play. First of all, they are a way of thinking and processing. In addition to that, they can also be used as a tool to create a story, context or a landscape.

Works

Xavier Duffaut

Xavier Duffaut

Fourt
18.11 - 18.12.21​

A place where poetic encounters emerge through processes of infiltration and appropriation, creating a cosmos of fraud and aesthetic conviction. Conceived as a soft-chateau, the exhibition is crowded with opulent expressions of hygiene, mass manufacturing and enchantment. Duffaut’s work activates the carefree qualities of market coercion. It shapes and sculpts wasted perfections up until a point where constellations of clean bold colors emerge.

For his first solo exhibition, Xavier Duffaut brings into focus the elegantly banal that intrigues him so. The works intend to produce a collective atmosphere of non-difference, of non-heterotopia. They allow us to fall implicit, to fall into a trope, into a corporate business meeting, a collective therapy session for people with trust issues.

FOURT asks serious questions about the nature of ‘realness’. Its impossibility and absolute possibility. Liveliness beyond the boundaries of realness. Forms catapult through the space creating new levels of dysphoric sensation and general confusion. A sanitary extravaganza, an arena of branded monstrosities. It wonders what might have happened in the factories or in the mechanical fur or in Julia's bathroom?

This show has one mission. To do it well. And then, to head to the compost or the gutter.

Works

Full of whispers

Full of whispers

04.02 - 18.03.23

I spend many parts of my childhood in ruins, prehistoric caves, dying cathedrals, archaeological sites and gravel pits. In the wake of destruction, I learned how time sculpts every stone carefully and precisely. A Greek column would shape shift to become an autonomous sculpture. A demonstration of Nature always having the upper hand. A ruin embodies paradoxes; a ruin is a remnant ‘off’ and a portal ‘in’. It’s a constant reminder of the passing of time. In melancholic fashion we reminisce about time before mass media.

Works