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It’s time to play, and the tone of the game is set by Jans Muskee who welcomes visitors with a large composition, Hanging in the air (2004): dressed in suits and ties, these three people suspended in mid-air in the middle of a car park (a veiled reference to historic hyper-realism?) produce an incredible evocation of a record sleeve. The relationship with music is also clearly explicit in a series of female nudes to which are attached the lyrics of some Joe Jackson songs: surely not an accident? Elsewhere, the artist recycles images from magazines, just as Michael Van den Besselaar makes use of the advertising iconography from the swinging sixties. While Waterskiing simply evokes the Beach Boys years, the message from the His Masters Voice series (young women posing before the latest model of the record player) is somewhat ambiguous, as indicated by the subtitles, The frivolic years of the Cold War. Till Rabus is not too concerned about these considerations: his extraordinary compositions evoke holiday photos superimposed on each other, with views of beaches mingling with underwater images. The iconography developed by his brother, Léopold Rabus, is disquieting in a different way, but more conducive to questioning and reflection. From one composition to another, he develops a world peopled with deformed characters, both funny and tragic, where the evocation of childhood is contaminated by strange poisonous emanations. Istvan Nyari also plays at giving his parents’ wedding (Ten Years Before They Divorce) a macabre atmosphere in which The Texas Chainsaw Massacre occupies the key position. Faced with this profusion of signs and insinuations, the spontaneity of Moke – who never fails to add “painter” to his signature – is quite refreshing. Similarly, while Nono Bandera also plays at decontex-tualisation, juxtaposing elements from very diverse sources, his compositions evoke a kind of popular mythology where humour wins the day over morbidity. The characters and animals posing for M-H Vander Eecken also form part of a tragi-comic setting: see in particular the prisoner in Abu Ghraib (which is obviously still providing inspiration for artists) skipping with the electric cable destined for torturing her. Eric White’s technique allows him to play on the ambiguity between hyper-realism and photography, while David Nicholson asserts himself, on the contrary, as a complete artist: Bridget, star of pornography destined for small people, forms part of an iconography in which sex – however trashy it is – is matched with quasi bucolic evocations (The Guitar Player). Nature is in fact at the centre of Serse’s compositions – although his Paesaggio Adottivo is almost intangible because of its dexterity – and of the floral study by Stéphane Balleux. For his part, G-Brecht represents landscape (underwater and outer space) only through the windows of a cockpit, the meeting point between nature and technology, whereas David Russon removes from his composition all the elements that are external to the characters: frozen in the midst of the most banal activity, they appear however to be oddly situated out of time. The game involving a confrontation between image and language is fond both in Jacques Monory and in Jimi Dams, but above all in the plates of Eudes Menichetti, reminiscent of the spirit of the French Encyclopaedia. The strange videos of Joanneke Meester – characters made from rags who are nevertheless quite alive, without the slightest sensory organ – reduce human activities to simple gestures devoid of all meaning. The images of Linda van Boven follow the same line of thought, as though stolen from everyday life.
November 18 2005 > January 7 2006
Wednesday-Saturday 2-6 pm or by appointment
Preview November 17 2005 18.00 > 21.00
SPECIAL THANKS TO PIPER-HEIDSIECK | BADOIT | MIG’S WORLD WINES | BERNARD WEBER
for further information contact Jerome Jacobs
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