Another six months have come and gone, marking the end 2021 with some nice opportunities and projects like 4 group shows, the launching of a mobile app and my first solo show in a gallery.
First group show was the Triennnale de gravure at La Boverie museum in Luik: a prestigious place from late XIXth century that looks like a palace from the outside. It was a printmaking contest and a show with 48 international artists, initially planned for the year before, but got postponed due to corona virus. The one-year delay gave me time to improve and finish some of the 5 projects selected, like with better displays, pedestals and other details. Exhibiting the fridge and the cake in the wall’s niche/alcove, between two majestic columns was visually impacting and fun.
Ars Moriendi, 2018
Funeral wreath, marble column
Subliminal Packagings, 2019
Inkjet prints mounted on iMac boxes, pedestals
gateau.jpg, 2019
Cake, vitrine
Full Moon, 2019
Lightbox, digital print and spray paint on plexi glas
Another group show in Luik was the Prix Dacos, which was also a printmaking contest. This one took place at the Cercle des Beaux-Arts, a gallery from a 30s building which is an exhibiting space for the students of fine art academies in the city. We were three artists to show works there. I exhibited the screen prints series, the TASCHE book and the sad Amazon parcels.
Faire TA(S)CHE
Media wall, pedestal, books
Probably that during spring or summer, I will go back to Luik and showcase the fake Deliveroo Fitness Club in a storefront. This will be for the next edition of Art au Centre, which gives artists the access to abandoned storefront in the city center of Luik
Talking of Deliveroo, back in September, I've re-organized the outdoor performance of body fitness with apprentice Deliveroo riders for the SUEUR Festival in Forest (Brussels). For this opus, I got inspired by a fitness coaching class at Parc du Cinquantennaire in Brussels. The class was accompanied with some pop-psyche-trance music playing out loud, resonating in the parking of Autoworld and the Military museum. The electro tracks contrasted with the solemn neoclassical architecture of the place and caught the attention of every passers by. All the ingredients for a performance were there. Anyways. Like those of March at Abbaye de la Cambre, the Délivrénoo performances had three parts:
1. Warm-up / Training
2. Individual ateliers of one minute
3 . Duels
So the music was different, but also one of the 4 apprentice, who kinda embodied the character of the clown by making fun of the coach, dancing and playing tricks. That was pure improvisation and it really brought something extra. If I had to organize these performances again, I must think of a better ending (e.g. with a ceremony to reward the winner of the duels. In other words : something that closes the show) and a track that is more synchronised with performers’ actions.
Next up is on a very new project I did back in August. Basically, it is a fake Uber eats mobile app with which one can order art online and customize it by ticking multiple choices boxes. When users submit their orders, I automatically receive an e-mail, with their customized art piece. As already mentioned in my September post, ‘über mensch’ stands for ‘beyond’ or ‘super-human’, ‘hero’ and ‘genius’ in German. The term has been appropriated by the nazis and more recently transhumanist philosophers, so it bears a lot of symbolics and significations. Like the project on Deliveroo, übermensch.vip compares food delivery riders to extreme sport champions. But it also embraces and questions the leisure industry, the (contemporary) art market, technologically advanced sciences and other things that represent a freaking lot of money.
To launch and promote the app, we distributed flyers to passers-by in front of different art spaces in Brussels, during the Brussels Gallery Weekend. The flyers were also imitating those from Uber Eats, with a code QR that redirects you to the website when you scan it.
The first time I distributed the flyers was in front of Ballroom gallery (Brussels). It was funny to hear from the galerist (who was aware of the project) that he understood I was somewhere nearby, because at certain point, everybody in the room was holding my flyers. I also remember one of the artist exhibiting in the gallery being mad at me and infantilizing me. She was like What are you doing? Did you ask the permission? Did you really have to do that now?
Action of distributing of Über Mensch flyers in front of Ballroom Gallery, Brussels
Since September, I left this project on stand-by to focus on other things. I missed some big occasions to distribute the flyers, like the FIAC in Paris, Art Antwerp, FRIEZE in London, ... The performances could have been quite relevant at these mega art events. But, hey, there will still be plenty of them.
Now let’s move on to a proposition that I got back in October, which was an outdoor group show in Heerlen (Netherlands). IKOB Museum and Greylight project joined to launch What the Flag?!, which invited artists to display flags in the city of Heerlen. The first spot I was assigned was the “Carbon 6” complex: the former National Statistics Office (”CBS”) which is now occupied by start-up companies, social entreprises, and others. During the late XIXth century, the site was a coal mine and in the 70s, they built this wonderful modernist/brutalist complex to host the offices of the CBS (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek).
Then the CBS moved out and the urban development company World of Walas bought it in 2012 for around 700K, with the promise to start ‘urban farming’ in the place. Apparently they never did, and instead of that, rented one wing to the dutch tax department. Local scandal. I found a nice video promoting the opening of Carbon 6 by World of Walas. It documents the opening ceremony with absurd performances by “Time Cruisers” strolling around on top of retro-futuristic machines of late XIXth century, but also the re-activation of a beautiful modernist fountain in the patio.
video available on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_QwLQtpsU
The flags that I could use were in the front yard of the complex. At first, I thought about putting flags that twisted the visual identity of World of Walas and to mimick the entrepreneurship logic and vocabulary.
Then I thought of hanging flags to announce the advent of three new fictitious firms in the very complex: “decline”, “flop” and “resign”. The graphic design for each one has been generated by online logo generators. Have a try, it’s very ludic.
So this is it with What the Flag?!.
Then in December, I got another group show proposition, this time in Ghent, and more precisely in SMAK (omggg). The project was called Curator machines and consisted in a vending machines that sells 3-D prints designed by 20 artists. You know me, first I wanted to make something in situ and contextual. I read somewhere that SMAK used to be a Casino in the 50s, untill the 80s, lol. This is probably the reason why Guillaume Bijl set a fake casino there in the 90s.
More precisely, bank card replicas of artistic director of SMAK, Philippe Van Cauteren, or Bernard Arnault (LVMH), François Pinault (Bourse de commerce) and Paris Hilton. In the end, I designed a twisted version of Paris Hilton’s AMEX with quotes of her on it like “that’s hot / you’re not”.
Next up is FOURT, a solo show at Ballroom Gallery in Brussels. The word ‘fourt’ (or ‘foert’) is a typical belgian swearword that expresses impatience and anger. Saying ‘Fourt’ is like saying ‘I’ve had enough with this’. For the design of the poster, I used the font of Disney’s cartoon Frozen and shot a plush representing one of the character of the movie, hanging on the wall, beheaded, like Maurizio Cattelan’s horse intallations. The show combined other pastiches of contemporary art icons with a fake Deliveroo electric bike, museified on a pedestal. There were also collages from 2017, two feathered Bird e-scooters on the street in front of the gallery and a performance during the opening night.
The performance was both ambiguous and in situ. It consisted in an actor cleaning the gallery’s window, from the outside, and dressed with the same uniform worn by the cleaning staff of King UpKot, the student housing that openend in September. Before that, the building was a squat since 2007. In 2018, the belgian company Upgrade Estate bought the building to renovate it and transform it into the student housing and a contemporary art gallery on the ground floor. King Upkot is the 25th student housing project launched by Upgrade Estate, who probably named it like this, because it is located on the Royal Street in Brussels. There are almost no traces left from the thousands of squatters who spent time there, except some graffitis in the stair case and murals in the patio. The day of the opening of King Upkot, there were young girls wearing black t-shirts branded RealEstate and cardboard crowns on their heads. They were welcoming the residents with croissants and chocolate bread (see secong pic below).
In the show Fourt, I also exhibited the same welcoming display of King Upkot, with crowns, balloons and pastries, but on which there was fake mold. This piece was one of the two contextual / in situ art works that referred to the place’s heritage and recent past.
The second one was the performance, with the guy cleaning the windows. The very uniforms that he wears has a tagline that says ‘cleaning legend’. We thought that this phrase was both violent and symbolic, talking of the gentrification of the place and the former squat becomming a legend, a myth. I am still editing the video now, but will publish it soon on the web, so stay tuned. Here are some stills.
