BELGIAN PARADISE

Sarah De Vos’ paintings start from snapshots, the locations she prefers are social hotspots where any form of control is absent. The point of view and framing make it almost impossible to really identify the people in the image. Perhaps "Limbo" evokes a different meaning depending on the generation to which one belongs. It is a dance in which one has to lean backwards and move under a horizontal pole without touching it. For some years it has been used very successfully as a social "icebreaker" game for tourists in tropical resorts. But Limbo is also a concept in Roman Catholic theology about the afterlife condition. It refers to a fictitious place between heaven and hell. In her paintings Sarah De Vos always creates a dialogue between beauty (in technique or representation) and the darker side of our existence.

The visual element of the soundpiece "Sometimes big bang, sometimes small bang, sometimes no bang" is a fake golden decorative doorbell. If one presses the button there is not necessarily a direct reaction to this action. The input goes into the computer and the programme is such, that often there is no sound or ‘"bang", sometimes a modest bang is heard, sometimes a big bang. For the artist this refers to the essence of every creative practice. If one works very hard, there is no guarantee as to an astonishing result. Often an interesting result, the "big bang", comes quite unexpectedly. The print "Here is …there, there" is a work still to be realised. It is an installation based on the cliché of tropical architecture within the context of holidays and leisure. Often southern elements are introduced in the northern part of the world suggesting an exotic environment. Filip Gilissen wants to work with seven existing macao parrots who are able to whistle Bobby McFerrin’s famous melody "Don’t worry, be happy". These birds would teach the song to other local birds and contaminate the whole bird population. The ideal place to start the project would be the "Jubelpark" in Brussels, which was built to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Belgium and often is seen as a trophy of the former colonisation in Africa.

In his video "Retla" Stijn Van Acker continues his exploration of narration. Already as early as 1963 Julio Cortazar introduced different reading procedures in his novel "Rayuela". From the early days on it is possible to break up the linearity of a story in film or video with the technique of montage. But since film and video are timebased media, there always is a linearity, one can’t escape completely from the parameter of time. In his video Stijn Van Acker starts with a merry-go-round introducing the concept of a loop. The narration is a constant variation on the same issue: a person is trying to position himself in the surrounding reality. The main thing for the artist is the fact that there is no coherent representation of reality. There might be a slight transformation in the field of existential questions, but most of the time they are just variations on the question of what reality is and how we relate to it. One can enjoy the total duration of the video, but perhaps it’s not necessary once one grasps the idea behind what is presented.

Sam Vanderveken realised a monumental painting especially for this show. His oeuvre is a search for the ultimate universal image. This explains his interest in collage, sampling, hybridisation and one could even speak of the creation of "gesammt-images". The title: "Mister Rabbit says: a moment of realisation is worth a thousand prayers" comes from "Natural Born Killers". The cult film is an intelligent satirisation of media, public opinion, morals and taste. In Sam Vanderveken’s large scale painting the macabre journey of the psychopathic serial murderers turns into a mix of a fairytale and the universe of Hiëronymus Bosch. One may recognise fragments from William Turner’s or Albrecht Dürer’s works, comics, shadowplays and other already existing images. Although the visual quotations are carefully chosen and important to the meaning of the painting, the utter importance lies in the creation of a visual network, itself as a reflection of todays world.

Reality sometimes is stranger than we could imagine it ourselves. The remarkable photo where a bunker and a grotto-like structure co-exist, seem to prove this. Katleen Vinck has a specific interest in the human manipulation of landscape and artificial interventions. Generally the traces or structures she is interested in have lost their function, meaning and context. The sculpture presented in this show is part of a series of works based on museum presentations. In fact the work can be seen as a cut-out, a slice of a museum with the imitation of the motive from a wooden floor. The boxes on tiny legs refer to pre-filmic representations of reality like dioramas and panoramas. Through the peep hole the eye of the viewer is confronted with a (mirrored) rock formation. It’s a variation on the theme of the grotto, the archetype of the cave.

Antonio Claudio Carvalho is a Brazilian artist based in London and Rio de Janeiro. In his work he often explores the dialogue between language and image. The painting "Yuri Gagarin", with the sentence: "I Don't see any God up here", refers to the words Khrushchev put in Gagarin's mouth. During his space flight, Gagarin remarked that the earth was wonderfully blue, and he was the first to enjoy it from a godlike point of view. However, it was the Flemish artist Roger Raveel who claimed that in Heaven (a perfect world) there probably would not exist any art. Perhaps art emerges from an imperfect world. Antonio's interest in the Belgium art tradition is focused on it's surrealistic and conceptually inspired artists such as Marcel Broodthaers. And his connection with Belgium is also showcased here in his series of print works produced at the Frans Masereel Centre in Kasterlee: Great Works of Art / More Great Works of Art / Guernica - The (Brazilian) Poem / The China and Belgium Series "Ceci est une...".

Three years ago Laura Wilson was invited to participate in an exhibition at the medieval archeological site in Ename, Belgium. At that time her former school Central Saint Martins was renovating the building. She took one brick and used it as the cornerstone to build a small wall with local bricks in Ename. Returning to the UK she took a brick from the archeological site to integrate it in the renovated building of Central Saint Martins. For the moment there still is no permit for this kind of intergration. Laura Wilson now asked some bricks from the Warp-building in Sint-Niklaas to realise a performance during the opening of "Belgian Paradise". Belgians are said to be born "with a brick in their stomach", meaning that they have the ambition of owing and build a house of their own, preferably to their own taste and rules.

Studies at the Wimbledon Art School under the guidance of William Cobbing. For the show's opening Poppy Bisdee will do a performance piece, exploring ideas of social interaction and audience participation. In previous works she has looked at possible methods of making tangible shadows cast by people. How can momentary shapes become more permanent? She would like to record shadows cast by visitors by cutting the shapes from a solid ground covering, such as felt or chalk. She hopes that the covering will pick up footprints of the visitors while she gradually cuts away the shadow figures, until the negative shadows merge and become ambiguous abstract shapes.