A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE Institut de Carton: Jan Swartenbroekx

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zondag 16 december 2012

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

maandag 10 december 2012

guided tours by Lars Kwakkenbos and Vincent Meessen

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.

zondag 4 november 2012

LocSolDom - Guided Tours Saturday November 10

Guided Tours LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS exhibition, Saturday November 10 2012

16h00 guided tour by Paul van der Eerden (1954, lives and works in Rotterdam (NL)), artist and co-founder of A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE – INSTITUT DE CARTON vzw.

18h00 guided tour by Peter Nijenhuis (1957, lives and works in Arnhem (NL)), historian, with a special interest in contemporary art and the history of ideas. He works as a journalist and curator. On his blog you can read more about art, design and art education: http://peternijenhuis.blogspot.com

You are welcome to be guided through this uncommon exhibition on circles, grids & space.  

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)

Jan Swartenbroekx marble & Raymond Barion's projector

maandag 1 oktober 2012

guided tours by Battista and Burki

Saturday September 29, guided tour by Emiliano Battista

Emiliano Battista was our first invited guide through the exhibition LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS. During the tour it is going to be a conversation about the works in the exhibition, so we talked about volumes and if it is possible that volumes are empty. A volume has to contain, vacuum doesn't contain and therefore is empty. Emiliano compared the disks of Christoph Fink with the shield of Achilles, that is a beautiful and rich confrontation. Thanks Emiliano for the improvised contribution to the exhibition LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS.

Saturday September 29, guided tour by Marie José Burki

At 17:00 h. Marie José Burki guided a second group of visitors through the exhibition. She talked about Jan Swartenbroekx painted marbles as facsimiles of marble. In Bernard Voita's photo of a grid Marie José pointed at the glass of red wine, it could only be there on that place to function in the composition. She was amazed and amused that a work of Rémy Zaugg was in the same exhibition with a work of Bruno Gironcoli. A professional exhibition maker never should (or could) bring these works together. The conversation continued about how the exhibition LOCUS SOLUS DOMESTICUS was made, and that four artists as curator can bring together works in an universe with a strong logical connection. Thanks a lot Marie José for your contribution, and the evaluation on the expectations about the guides. A Guided Tour is in fact a conversation with the visitors and the curators about the works, the relations and the differences.
Next Guided Tour on Saturday October 13. The guides will soon be announced on this blog.

Adress:
Avenue de Jette 41 - Jetselaan 41
1081 Koekelberg / Brussels
Metro Simonis, 10 minutes walk.

A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE - INSTITUT DE CARTON vzw is an initiative launched by a few artists aiming at organising a special show in a privately owned house in Brussels, approximately twice a year.
In 2011 we started with a series of 52 drawings after Shakespeare’s Macbeth, made by Paul van der Eerden. 2012 kicked off with Les secrets de la mémoire, a series of 124 blackouts by Willem Oorebeek. Followed by Locus Solus Domesticus, a group show inspired by Raymond Roussel's novel Locus Solus that could only be visited with Cantarel-like guides.

In the first half of 2013, we showed photo works by Sarah Deraedt, Maartje Fliervoet and Katja Mater. And in the second half, the Dutch artist Jan Andriesse was our guest of honour in a show called Maison de Tolérance.

In 2014, we continued with FORCEFIELD, a drawing show built on the confrontation of two extremes: an abstract drawing by the Swiss healer and artist EMMA KUNZ (1892-1963) and an awfully realistic drawing by the Indian artist FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA (1924- 2002).

In the spring of 2015, Suchan Kinoshita set up her Operation Theatre, an experience the visitor could only live when the theatre was being operated. In the autumn of the same year, we organized a marathon screening of the Operating Theatre footage.

In the first half of 2016 we mounted the show MIND FABRIC, a conceptual approach to textiles, fabric, patterns and systems in art. The remainder of 2016 and the first months of 2017 Institut de Carton fell into a kind of hibernation, due to other time-consuming activities of the founders.

In September 2017, Institut de Carton will be awoken by La Vie Palimpseste La Vie, a retrospective of works by Henri Jacobs, comprising paintings, drawings, tapestries, textile works and porcelain.

Beginning 2018, we will show works by Jochen Lempert, a German photographer who studied biology before turning to photography in the early 1990s. In his analog black and white pictures animals and nature play an important role. In the second half of next year we intend to stage works by artists from different origines, living in Brussels: Un cercle bruxellois.