final day Locus Solus Domesticus on Saturday December 22 2012

Raymond Barion talking about his painting "Projector"

Johan van Oord talking about his painting "123.10"

Xavier De Clippeleir talking about his sculpture "12 vlak"

 

 

Impression of the final day with guided tours through the exhibition

Marie José Burki, a dog in my mind (things) in colour negative

LAST GUIDED TOUR LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS

DERNIER JOUR / LAATSTE DAG / FINAL DAY !
 
We warmly offer you a final opportunity to visit the LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS exhibition.

Participating artists will be your guides through the show on Saturday, December 22nd from 17:00 till 19:00.

Don’t miss it!

A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE - INSTITUT DE CARTON vzw
 Avenue de Jette 41 / Jetselaan 41, 1081 Koekelberg, Brussels
 (7 minutes walk from Metro Simonis)

Raymond Roussel

guided tours by Piet de Jonge and Sabine van Sprang

Guide Piet de Jonge on Locus Solus and Little Sparta

Guide Piet de Jonge on Charly van Rest

The Locus Solus Domesticus exhibition has been open for 12 weeks now. We have had 17 guides who did a personal tour through the exhibition, like Martial Canterel in the novel Locus Solus. Last Saturday, December 15, Piet de Jonge and Sabine van Sprang were our excellent guides. During the tour, Piet de Jonge tried not to mention the names of the artists, which is quite difficult as the name of the artist is a label and the work of art can’t exist without its creator’s name. But Piet succeeded quite a while in allowing the art works exist in anonymity. The works change, the veil of the name is gone, a layer less to peel of. The erased black and white drawings on magazine images reminded Piet de Jonge of the surrealist magazine Minotaure. Photography can focus on objects that don’t seem to be real, but exist in another world that is surreal. The erasing on magazine images have the same atmosphere of strange, prehistoric stones or fossils like they were often reproduced in Minotaure. The three cobblestones are very precisely reproduced, just like Marcel D. had done when he made the facsimiles of his entire oeuvre in “boite en valise”. It is not really the work of an artist, but rather the work of a very precise handcrafts man. Comparable to the three painted marbles at the beginning of the exhibition.

Sabine van Sprang, specialist in 16^th and 17^th century Northern European painting, set out with a clear viewpoint. At first glance she perceived the exhibition as a “cabinet d’amateur” or “Wunderkammer”. In Renaissance Europe such a “cabinet of curiosities” was an encyclopaedic collection of types of objects whose categorical boundaries still had to be defined and could belong to natural history, geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art and antiques. It is a representation of the world and the universe that fits into an exhibition space. Sabine started with the anamorphosis photo of Bernard Voïta, the painted marbles of Jan Swartenbroekx and the painted circles composition of Johan van Oord. Three works which represent the entire exhibition. Anamorphosis, perspective, illusion, perception are keywords, art and nature playing, meeting, wondering. In the Locus Solus Domesticus “Wunderkammer” the earth is flat, like the discs of Christoph Fink. The black disc, representing all the facts and events in the artist’s life that haven’t been written down, was the most perfect work in the exhibition, the best to end the guided tour with. But you can’t end with perfectionism, so Sabine asked the visitors to descend the stairs and go to the basement to see the most immaterial work in the exhibition: Joëlle Tuerlinckx’ simple geometric Volume lighted by three spots.

Guide Sabine van Sprang in conversation with Willem Oorebeek

Guide Sabine van Sprang on a diptych of Mitja Tusek

Guided Tours # 9, Piet de Jonge and Sabine van Sprang

Saturday December 15 2012, Guided Tours LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS exhibition:

16h00 guided tour by Piet de Jonge (former curator Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, currently chief editor “what’s up” magazine, curator RAW expo, Rotterdam)

17h30 guided tour by Sabine van Sprang (curator at Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels)

A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE - INSTITUT DE CARTON vzw
 

Avenue de Jette 41 / Jetselaan 41, 1081 Koekelberg, Brussels
 (7 minutes walk from Metro Simonis)

Rémy Zaugg, constitution d'un tableau no 20, 1990

 

guided tours by Lars Kwakkenbos and Vincent Meessen

Lars Kwakkenbos, Time & Space guided tour

Lars Kwakkenbos, Time & Space guided tour

Last Saturday, December 8 2012, Lars Kwakkenbos started his guided tour on the top floor. On November 24 he followed the Guided Tour from Robin Vanbesien and was inspired by Robin's use of the image of Angelus Novus. Walter Benjamin wrote about the drawing of Paul Klee of the angel who is blown into the future, with his back forward, and the face gazing into the past. Looking over history and its graveyards, battlefields, ruins and ashes. In the Locus Solus Domesticus exhibition time and space can be unwind by spiralling down the stairs. As an Angelus Novus you meet the debris of artworks made in the past. The future is the hole in the centre of Christoph Fink's discs. 

The first floor room was experienced by Lars as a blurry room, with blurry works of art, blurry but very precisely made. It is related to the aspect of coincidence, many artworks are created with some coincidence in the procedure of making. It is a paradox that the coincidence in the making process is very precise and kept well in hand. Lars finished his tour with the "Six Memos for the New Millennium" from Italo Calvino. Exactitude, multiplicity and consistency are three chapters from Calvino's Six Memo's which are very clear presented in the Locus Solus Domesticus exhibition.

Vincent Meessen started his tour with an enthusiastic talk about Raymond Roussel. The life and death of Roussel is a story full of riddles, suspicions, rebuses, myths and smoke curtains. Vincent pointed to several beautiful coincidences in the exhibition and Roussel's life and work. Raymond Barion has the same first name as Raymond Roussel, Raymond Barion is showing a projector in the exhibition, Ray means "light", strange chance. 

In the novel Locus Solus is a story were little insects with metal threads on there feet are making music, hidden in some Tarot cards. Charly van Rest works also with small insects which are doing the drawing for him on ionised bombarded paper. 

Vincent Meessen's key-work in the exhibition is Jean-Luc Moulène's photograph

"Commode coulemelles". White spores of mushrooms on a black tablet of marble delivers many inspiring investigations about what we see and the possible interpretations. Procreating by mushroom spores comes directly from the pre-historic time, spores are between the vegetal and the animal, it are cryptogamous "things", plants that haven't true flowers or seeds. Cryptogam and cryptogram is one letter of difference, the favourite character of Raymond Roussel, the "r". 

Vincent went on and on, many side paths and associatively made connections between the life and work of Roussel and works in the exhibition were made by him. The alchemist Comte Henri De Ruolz, Robert Houdin "comment on devient sorcier", Georges Méliès the illusionist and inventor of special effects in film making. From the black marble in Jean-Luc Moulène's photo to Jan Swartenbroekx with the painted marbles and three cobblestones of Koenraad Dedobbeleer Vincent made a beautiful resume of Locus Solus Domesticus. The exhibition isn't an illustration but is an experience inspired by Raymond Roussel. 

Many thanks to Lars and Vincent for their very inspiring tours. 

Vincent Meessen, le mirage du noir dans la chaîne de blanc.

Vincent Meessen, le mirage du noir dans la chaîne du plan.

Guided Tours #8, Lars Kwakkenbos and Vincent Meessen

Saturday December 8 2012, Guided Tours LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS exhibition:

16h00 guided tour by Lars Kwakkenbos (1975 - Viersen (Germany), art historian, lives and works in Brussels)

17h30 guided tour by Vincent Meessen (1971 , Baltimore (USA), artist, lives and works in Brussels)

A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE - INSTITUT DE CARTON vzw
  
Avenue de Jette 41 / Jetselaan 41, 1081 Koekelberg, Brussels
 (10 minutes walk from Metro Simonis)

Chatlotte Moth, study for a 16 mm film, 2011

 

a lecture as guided tour by Chris Dercon

introduction by Willem Oorebeek

Sunday December 2, half an hour before his guided tour started, Chris Dercon looked at the Locus Solus Domesticus exhibition. There are plenty of “bollekes”, dots, knots, “petits boutons” in the exhibition, he noted, and those dots, knots are looking back at us, the viewers.

Because of the great number of visitors Chris decided not to walk through the exhibition, but to give a lecture which started with a brief introduction of Raymond Roussel. Roussel is “en vogue”, it seems Roussel is always more or less “en vogue”, inspiring artists, writers, curators. Dali, having a retrospective exhibition in Centre Pompidou until March 2013, was influenced by Roussel, the Neue Züricher Zeitung published a long article about Roussel in the last Saturday newspaper.

After the introduction Chris sped up and posed questions: “Is it possible to make art and continue making art in a post critical era?” “Art that doesn’t allow any contamination of reality is an indifferent art”. “We think that we know everything about art by travelling around the world to see all exhibitions, that is bullocks!” Impressions d’Afrique, Paul Bowles, Serendipity, Knots, Dots, Bollekes, Petits Boutons, Michel Leiris, Alfred Jarry, Jean-Luc Moulène’s mushrooms staring at us, plenty of associations.

Roussel’s Locus Solus is just a framework for the exhibition, like Dogma is for Lars von Trier. You need rules, work with a set of rules, a set of parameters which are binding you. Locus Solus Domesticus has been made with a set of rules for restriction, and that finally creates more freedom. The dots, knots, bollekes and petits boutons return regularly, as a mantra, and Chris made the quote that it made him aware of “seeing oneself seen”. Art is contingent these days, also the makers, of all art forms, like dancers; Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s dancers are going to sing, the musicians are going to dance. It is a set of possibilities, perhaps again disobedience is going to fresh it up, or an exodus is going to take place.

It was a very rich lecture Chris Dercon gave, and a great honour to have him in Institut de Carton. Thanks a lot Chris, also for the aftertalk about textiles.

Chris Dercon on dots, knot's, bollekes, petits boutons and seeing oneself seen

guided tour audience on Sunday December 2 2012