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.