Strombeek & Mechelen - bkSM - the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The Tragedy of the Applause:  September 25 - October 21, 2010 - Strombeek Cultural Centre
Selection & Accumulation: September 30 - November 28, 2010 - De Garage in Mechelen
World & Image: November 11 - December 17, 2010 - Strombeek Cultural Centre

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, a 1966 film by the Italian director Sergio Leone, has gone down in film history as one of the best ever spaghetti westerns. More than forty years later, bk sm has taken its title as the label for a project on 'beauty'. 'Des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas', but bk sm is in any case making a serious attempt to reflect on this notion, which colours, surprises and seasons our lives! The Good, The Bad & The Ugly takes the form of a trilogy at De Garage in Mechelen and the Cultural Centre in Strombeek. A broad spectrum of activities – exhibitions, film, theatre, concerts, workshops, performances and talks – revolves around the concept of 'beauty'.

For the first part, the group exhibition entitled The Tragedy of the Applause, the cultural centre will be taken over by OHNO COOPERATION, a Needcompany splinter group comprising Maarten Seghers and Jan Lauwers as a duo of artists and curators. They are inviting the artist-musicians Rombout Willems (NL) and Nicolas Field (CH) and, in new and existing work, will enter into dialogue with the Canadian artist Jeff Wall's masterpiece The Guitarist (1987). The project will get a festive start at 8 pm on 25 September in a free concert by the artists taking part, plus Eric Sleichim, who for the occasion will be taking up the guitar!

 The second section – Selection & Accumulation – will take place at De Garage in Mechelen and focuses on a subjective and selective overview of postwar visual art. The exhibition with this title is in the form of a single big loop that includes work by Cobra and takes in Zero, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual and so on. The public will be treated to major works that have rarely if ever been shown, by such giants as Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn, Bram Bogaert, Eugène Leroy and Andy Warhol, who will demonstrate how the concept of 'beauty' has changed in the course of time and how its traditional meaning has eroded.

 The third and final part of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly is called World & Image and focuses on the concept of 'beauty' from a non-European point of view. Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, Ricardo Brey and Marthine Pascale Tayou will be showing work whose beauty is 'visibly' interwoven with the social reality of being 'different'. Christoph Schlingensief and Daniel Buren will be countering this from their own specific frames of reference.

More information:
www.cultuurcentrummechelen.be
www.ccstrombeek.be
www.needcompany.org