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PRES S RELEASEYes, subject matters Preview: 16 June 2007, 5-7 pm, Saturday 17 June 2007 - 07 July 2007
The impulse for labeling ideas, material and phenomena - whether they be of significance or marginalia - is a trait found amongst scientists, artists, critics and collectors. To select interesting subjects, and then subject them to scrutiny and categorization, is an act of creativity - or cruelty. At Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Ellen Augustynen, Julien Collieux, Frie J. Jacobs, Carina Gosselé, Zazah G.Van Den Broeck, Michael Laird, Jacqueline Machado de Souza and Katrien Wuyts present subject matter in the form of videos, drawings, photographs, installations and paintings which invite a multiplicity of associations, as if in a cabinet of curiosities: subject to consideration... (Michael Laird, April 2007)-:-:-:- Ellen Augustynen (°1958 Belgium, Lives & Works in Antwerp )- Ellen Augustynen works with video, photography and installation, but always presents her work as a ready-made, drawn from reality. The starting point of Ellen Augustynen’s work is a rather nihilistic one, the result being that she finds no satisfaction in form, technique or content. While ‘playing the artist’, almost brutally making poetic statements, Ellen Augustynen explores the limits of the presentable, confronting the public with the duality of banality and meaning. Julien Collieux (°1976 France, Lives & Works in Berlin) - ... “To listen and watch to Julien Collieux’s music make me remind of prehistoric women and men. They also had music notes, but a little different from ours. It would have been impossible -with oral tradition- to transmit exactly the same notes many thousand years long. At this time, it was very hard to find the right C, D or E before a concert; the temperature change and the humidity in the caves put constantly the instrument out of tune. But no one was disturbed because all the instruments became out of tune simultaneously.” (fragment text by Norbert Schulz) Frie J. Jacobs (°1957 Belgium, Lives & Works in Zoersel) - “Frie J. Jacobs makes photographs with an embodied gaze that has become corporeal through the eye. Instead of letting his mind go out throughthe eyes to wander around the objects, he allows the objects to pass into him. It is the intensity of alterity, of the object’s physicality and of itsaffect, which like a ripple through the ether reaches the artist’s body that is itself part of the flesh of the world. This intensive force legitimises the artist’s existence. It is not the artist who gives birth to objects or things, but things that give birth to artists. Raw impressions of objects are first captured and held hostage; and then, like important memories, they are preserved as images. Prelude consists of nine unique photographs, which are images the artist has decided to preserve. They are the result of an investigation into one of the five themes of his project Fatum.” ( Fragment text by David Ulrichs) Carina Gosselé (°1963 Belgium, Lives & Works in Antwerp) - Carina Gosselé seeks to analyse, recreate and adapt specific ideas, memories and imaginings. Confronting spectators with a visually coded realization of her inner world, a transformative experience happens in the space where performance, video and installation interact. A new reality comes into being. Michael Laird (°1963 United States, Lives & Works in Antwerp) - Michael Laird is a multi-media artist primarily concerned with deconstructing the relationship between the people and their environment. In order to do this, various strategies are employed, including psycho-geography, optical and psychedelic abstraction and political analysis. His most recent work examines the possibility of reinterpreting and even restructuring our perception of people in the media. Jacqueline Machado de Souza (°1964 Brazil Lives & Works in Maastricht) - A variety of photographic tools and video make up the foundation of my work. Using archive material and recordings of unstages incidents I examine the various layers by which meanings emerge into reality. I frequently make images from daily life, observations of human behaviour and incidental registrations as a starting point, always with the purpose of illuminating the separate semantic reality beneath. We may bring these meanings to light by elaborating the initial material. This process turns out to be paradoxical time after time. The images firm a counterpoint to the reality that once participated in their coming about. Katrien Wuyts (°1973 Belgium, Lives & Works in Antwerp) - ‘Nightlights Fiat Lux’: When we go to bed, we cannot always sleep promptly. A lot of things might have happened that day, in our world, in the world. The Nightlights refer to this world, the world outside our window which is so various and odd. Sometimes it’s nice to forget about it all and just stare at the stars, those splendid sparkles around us - consoling constellations.
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