Antwerp - Extra City & M HKA - Animism

January 22 - May 2, 2010

Animism is a long-term exhibition and publication project that approaches the concept of animism - coined by 19th century anthropologists in the context of the colonial encounter - from a contemporary perspective. It addresses the current increase in interest in animism, which stems from a widespread re-visioning of modernity, by a reflection on aesthetic processes seen through the prism of an exhibition.

By placing selected historical references next to contemporary work, Animism brings together works that reflect and negotiate the boundary between the subjective and the objective. Across the registers of technological media, moving images, depictions of life and embodiment, the exhibition questions the mimetic processes of modern aesthetics as ways to negotiate and, often paradoxically, confirm and maintain the imaginary oppositions of modernity.

An accompanying catalogue - the first in a series of two - connects several recent attempts at rethinking animism from a variety of perspectives, and traces their various historical genealogies.

Concept: Anselm Franke
Curators: Antwerp: Anselm Franke (Director Extra City Antwerp), Edwin Carels (Researcher KASK/HoGent), Bart De Baere (Director M HKA Antwerp).

A second version of the exhibition will be shown at Kunsthalle Bern from May till July 2010. Subsequent versions will be developed at the Generali Foundation in Vienna and the House of World Cultures in Berlin in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

More information:
www.extracity.org
www.muhka.be

Image: Daria Martin, Soft Materials, 2004 (16mm film)

Antwerp - Objectif Exhibitions - Matias Faldbakken

Opening Saturday, 10 april 2010, 6pm - 9pm
April 10 -  May 22, 2010

Objectif Exhibitions presents Norwegian artist and writer Matias Faldbakken's  first show in Belgium. Faldbakken (b. 1973, lives and works in Oslo) mixes a conceptual strategy with trivial gestures, vandalism and appropriation, poetry and pop-culture, often circling around the idea of artistic production as the practice of doing nothing and of negation. He often employs invisible negatives through which to reconsider more ordinary, familiarly assumed constructions of any given situation.

On April 9 (8pm), Objectif Exhibitions and NICC will organise an artist talk with Matias Faldbakken, who will be interviewed by Giovanni Carmine (director Kunsthalle St.Gallen) at NICC (Antwerp).  

His most recent solo exhibitions include The Hills, STANDARD OSLO (Oslo) in 2010; Shocked Into Abstraction, Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture (Oslo) and Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York); Extreme Siesta, Kunst Halle St Gallen (Sankt Gallen) in 2009 and Kunsthalle Friedricianum (Kassel) upcoming 2010. In 2005, he represented Norway in the Nordic Pavillion at the Venice Biennial.

More information:
www.objectif-exhibitions.org
www.nicc.be

Brussels - April 22 till 26: An amazing weekend for the arts!

ART BRUSSELS 2010
April 23 - 26

The 28th edition of Art Brussels takes place from Friday 23 to Monday 26 April 2010, with
preview Thursday 22. 171 galleries from 23 countries and works by more than 1300 artists offer an insight of the current international contemporary art scene. Combined with an exciting VIP OFF programme, panel discussions, guided tours and many collaborations with private and public cultural institutions, Art Brussels welcomes more than 30.000 professionals, collectors and art lovers from Belgium and abroad.

Art Brussels conference programme

• April 23, 3-5pm: The Private-Public Collection: a Win-Win? Models for Public Private Partnerships in Art Storage (in collaboration with BAM and the University of Antwerp)

• April 24, 3-5pm: Committed collecting

• April 25, 3-5pm: Still Life as a dictionary: from the classical tradition to contemporary research.

More information: www.artbrussels.be

CONFERENCE - THE COMITÉ VAN ROOSENDAAL PRESENTS 'INSTITUTIONAL ATTITUDES'
April 24 - 25 (Beursschouwburg, Brussels)

The Comité van Roosendaal is a platform involving some of the leading contemporary art institutions in the Benelux/Rhineland area. It has been functioning for some years as a reflective meeting platform to discuss policy questions for public contemporary art institutions. With the  conference 'Institutional Attitudes' the Comité van Roosendaal looks at its founding premise: the shared conviction that contemporary art institutions may be an important voice in society.

Invited speakers: Zdenka Badovinac, Bart De Baere, Miroslaw Balka, Bassam El Baroni, Manu Claeys, Ann Demeester, Charles Esche, Alex Farquharson, , Anselm Franke, Pascal Gielen, Ann Goldstein, Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, Marc Jacobs, Nataša Ilić, Marta Kuzma, Maurizio Lazzarato, Dieter Lesage, Vanessa Joan Müller, Julia Moritz, Dieter Roelstraete, Irit Rogoff, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Simon Sheikh, Frans Timmermans and Michael Turner.

More information: www.comitevanroosendaal.eu/...

BRUSSELS GALLERY NIGHT
April 23, 6 - 10 pm

Participating galeries: AEROPLASTICS contemporary, Aliceday, Baronian_Francey, Crown Gallery, Gladstone Gallery, Xavier Hufkens, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Jozsa Gallery, fdc satellite Les filles du calvaire, Elaine Levy Project, Meessen De Clercq, Nomad Gallery, Galerie Nathalie Obadia Elisa Platteau Galerie, Almine Rech Gallery, Sorry we are closed, Think.21, Twig Gallery

More information: www.artbrussels.be/events.html

TRAJECTOR ART FAIR
April 23 - 25

Trajector Art Fair will transform Hotel Bloom! into a vibrant 'boutique hotel art fair', providing a platform for a range of international art spaces (project spaces, artists' initiatives and independent curatorial projects)  - coming from Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Finland and the UK, amongst other locations - to present some of the best emerging contemporary art to a Brussels audience. Each will present a curatorial project within a hotel room, at once referencing the tradition of the 'hotel art fair'.

More information: www.trajectorartfair.org

PA/PER VIEW: ART BOOK FAIR
April 22-25 (Wiels, Brussels)

PA/PER VIEW art book fair will bring together 33 of Europe's leading artist book publishers during Belgium's most intense contemporary art weekend. Leave your laptop behind and come and browse amongst the finest titles of these consistent players of the printed word and image.
On Thursday 22 April a panel discussion will deal with 'The Artist Book as Exhibition: Issues for Authors and Audiences'. Invited speakers: Elaine Sturtevant, Joost Smiers, Seth Siegelaub, Daniel McClean and Luc Derycke.

More information: www.merpaperkunsthalle.org/...

Brussels - Wiels - Felix Gonzalez-Torres - Specific Objects without Specific Forms

January 16 - April 25, 2010

WIELS premieres a major traveling retrospective of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' oeuvre, including both rarely seen and more known artworks, while proposing an experimental form for the exhibition that is indebted to the artist's own radical conception of the artwork.

Gonzalez-Torres (American, b. Cuba 1957-1996), one of the most influential artists of his generation, settled in New York in the early 1980s, where he studied art and began his practice as an artist before his untimely death of AIDS related complications. His work can be seen in critical relationship to Conceptual art and Minimalism, mixing political activism, emotional affect, and deep formal concerns in a wide range of media, including drawings, sculpture, and public billboards, often using ordinary objects as a starting point-clocks, mirrors, light fixtures. Amongst his most famous artworks are his piles of candy and paper stacks from which viewers are allowed to take away a piece. They are premised, like so much of what he did, on instability and potential for change: artworks without an already preset or specific form. The result is a profoundly human body of work, intimate and vulnerable even as it destabilizes so many seemingly unshakable certainties (the artwork as fixed, the exhibition as a place to look but not touch, the author as the ultimate form-giver).

To present the oeuvre of an artist who put fragility, the passage of time, and the questioning of authority at the center of his artworks, the exhibition will be entirely re-installed at each of its venues halfway through its duration by a different invited artist whose practice has been informed by Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work. A first version of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form by curator Elena Filipovic will open to the public and on March 5, 2010, the artist Danh Vo will re-install the exhibition, effectively making an entirely new show.

Organized by WIELS in collaboration with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, New York, the exhibition will travel to the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (with the collaboration of artist Carol Bove) and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (with the collaboration of artist Tino Sehgal).

More information:
www.wiels.org

Image: "Untitled" (Golden), 1995. Strands of beads and hanging device. Dimensions vary with installation. Installation view of "Felix Gonzalez-Torres: 2 Installationen" at Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 1996. Photo: Thorsten Monschein ©The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

Ghent - ZebraStraat - Update_3 | body sound

April 17 - June 20, 2010

The Liedts-Meesen Foundation is organising its biggest biennial, update, for the third time at the Zebrastraat. This third edition promises to be an intriguing cross-section of the most impressive works from Centre Pompidou's Collection of New Media. Once again the foundation is cooperating with an internationally renowned curator, giving New Media an exciting and contemporary edge. Following in the footsteps of illustrious artist-curators such as Jean-Marie Dallet (Fr) and Peter Weibel (Ger), curator Christine Van Assche endeavours to present a history of sound in the arts with 'body sound'. Celebrated contemporary artists such as Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Manon De Boer, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Casten Nicolai-Alva Noto, Anouk De Clercq, Didier Faustino, Mike Kelly/Scanner, Martin Creed, Adam Mc. Ewen, Keiko Owada, Mika Vaino, Chris Marker, Ugo Rondinone, Emmanuel Lagarrigue and Sémiconductor will be presented, both individually as well as in interaction with each other, on a course of shape and sound. This is realized by a specially designed lay-out of the exhibition, provided by the architects of Mésarchitecture (Paris).

The exhibition is given even more "body" through an additional exposition of the nominees for the Technological Art Award presented by the Liedts-Meesen Foundation. The jury selected these ten works from over 270 candidates: Bard Perry, USA, Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake; Luque Sánchez Félix, Spain , Chapter I : The Discovery Installation; Debackere Boris, Belgium, Probe; Peter Alwast, Australia, Everything; Beyls Peter, Belgium, Petri; Sobolewska Dominika, Poland, RGB 5red-Green-Blue; Im Go Eun, South-Korea, SEE(N); De Boeck Christoph, Belgium, Staalhemel; Elsenaar Arthur, The Netherlands, Face Shift; Gachadoat Julien, France, Gravity.

More information:
www.zebrastraat.be/... 

Image: Emmanuel Lagarrigue | I never Dream Otherwise than Awake © Emmanuel Lagarrigue and Galerie Alain Gutharc. Coll. Centre Pompidou. Photo: Marc Domage

Ghent - S.M.A.K. - Koen van den Broek, Loek Grootjans, Tamara Van San and Ed Templeton

In spring 2010 S.M.A.K. presents 4 exhibitions of international artists Koen van den Broek, Loek Grootjans, Tamara van San and Ed Templeton.

KOEN VAN DEN BROEK 'Curbs & Cracks'
January 30 - May 16, 2010
Since January 2010 S.M.A.K. is showing "Curbs & Cracks", a retrospective exhibition of work by the Belgian artist Koen van den Broek (b. 1973, Bree). The artist finds his inspiration in 'being en route' and his work is nurtured by dozens of road trips. Using his own snapshots the artist creates the basis for his paintings, and in a manner that is to the point and functional. What interest the artist are the small segments of reality which most of us seem not to really notice. A kerb, a collection of shadows on the road suggesting the presence of a truck and cracks in the asphalt which nobody notices. This 'antisocial' focus is linked to a painterly process in which van den Broek strips the images of all unnecessary detail so that the atmosphere is defined only by several basic lines.

LOEK GROOTJANS  'Leaving Traces'
January 30 - May 16, 2010
Leaving Traces turns the spotlight on three major installations by Dutch artist Loek Grootjans.  By bringing them together we are given an insight into his artistic practice which, since he started his career at the end of the 80s, has seen a great many developments.

TAMARA VAN SAN  'The wandering Tuba Method'
February 28 - April 18, 2010
The sculptures by Tamara Van San comprise innumerable similar, or then again very diverse, objects, materials and textures. They are never devised from a central point, plan or idea that imposes a certain order but acquire often unseen shapes during the creative process itself. Van San's creations always appear to be on the verge of growing and moving, shrinking or swelling, of losing an appendage or in fact acquiring a new bump.

ED TEMPLETON 'The cemetery of reason'
April 3 - June 13, 2010
The Cemetery of Reason is conceived as a mid-career retrospective of the American artist Ed Templeton. The exhibition tells the story of a pro skateboarder, a photographer, a drawer, a painter, etc. A story which, although it focuses on his own life and those of the people around him, transcends the autobiographical and exposes social and societal phenomena unhesitatingly but without pointing a finger. The S.M.A.K. will be assembling into dazzling clusters of images the photos, paintings and sculptures he has done over the last fifteen years.

More information:
www.smak.be

Image: Koen van den Broek, Broken Yellow Border, 2003, oil on canvas, 195 x 130 cm, Private Collection London

Ghent - S.M.A.K. & Vooruit - Electrified 02 – Hacking Public Space

April 3 - June 6, 2010

The S.M.A.K. and the Vooruit Arts Centre are joining forces to overrun the town. "Electrified 02 - Hacking Public Space" focuses on artists whose field of action is the 'public space'. Unbounded and virtually unregulated, they hack into the town with unannounced interventions. Traces of this seep into the museum, where new and existing works are brought face to face with flashbacks from the seventies and nineties.

Electrified is the name under which the S.M.A.K. and the Vooruit mount this biennial project. This second edition is taking up a decisive position on the crossroads of several directions in the visual arts. At the same time it will expose the friction between the areas where the two institutions operate: the S.M.A.K. in contemporary art and the Vooruit in media art, sound and performance art. In the quest for a shared 'mentality' in these different dynamics, the public space is taken as a common thread. In this case, the term 'public space' is all-embracing, without losing sight of the actual distinction between real and virtual public space.

In addition to probing the boundaries between the different fields of art and the way artists currently enter the public space, Electrified 02 - Hacking Public Space is also a study of changing trends that have kept the notion of 'public space' in vogue for the last thirty years. In this sense, the project presents itself as a complementary triptych: sixteen artists, who operate internationally, with extremely varied backgrounds, will be showing new and existing work in the museum. More than half of them will also be undertaking actions in the town. These actions will be documented and gradually inserted into the exhibition.

Participating artists: Lucas Murgida, Julius von Bismarck, Ivan Moudov, Ben Benaouisse, Carlos Rodríguez-Méndez, Amilcar Packer, Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, Dogma00, Javier Núñez Gasco, Roberta Gigante, Messieurs Delmotte, Wilfredo Prieto, Miet Warlop, Helmut Smits, Christophe Bruno, Pierre-Laurent Cassière.

More information:
www.smak.be/...
vooruit.be/...

Image: Julius von Bismarck_fulgurator

Hasselt - Z33 - Design by Performance

March 14 - May  30, 2010

The world of design has been witness to how the boundaries between art and experimental design are becoming ever more blurred.  Z33 already focussed on this phenomenon in 'Designing Critical Design', in which designers introduced a critical element into their work. The exhibition 'Design by Performance' is a showcase for performative trends in contemporary design, which focuses not on the production of a finished product, but on the production process itself: objects whose realisation is a continuous project, affected or formed by either the environment, the specific situation in which they find themselves, or onlookers. As such, processes and performances constitute a crucial part of Design by Performance, thus lending the exhibition its unpredictable and spontaneous character, and converting what is otherwise a pure 'exhibition space' into a space for events, interventions and actions by designers, artists and the public.

Participants: Atelier NL (NL), Maarten Baas (NL),  Pieke Bergmans (NL),  David Bowen (USA), Oscar Diaz (UK), Edhv (NL), Front (Sw), Martino Gamper (UK), Simon Heijdens (UK/NL), Eric Klarenbeek (NL), Sofie Lachaert & Luc d'Hanis (B), Laurent Liefooghe (B), Lawrence Malstaf (B), Bruno Munari (IT), Markus Schinwald (Au), Studio Glithero (UK), Studio Libertiny (NL), Tjep. (NL), Unfold & Tim Knapen (B)

More information:
www.z33.be

Image: based on the photo series by Bruno Munari, "Seeking comfort in an uncomfortable chair" - Photography: Kristof Vrancken - Performer: Seppe Baeyens

Kortrijk - Happy New Flandres Festival - Sounding City

April 24 - May 9, 2010

Sounding City 2010 (Klinkende Stad), which is an important part of the Happy New Flanders Festival,  continues the long tradition of  presenting and producing sound art in Kortrijk. Every two years an international sound art exhibition is presented: a soundwalk guides you along different places in the city centre.

Sounding City 2010 focusses on the finest in Flemish Sound Art. Meet twelve artists in suprising settings: Maria Blondeel, Leo Copers, Christoph De Boeck, Pauwel De Buck, Boris Debacker & Steven Devleminck, Aernoudt Jacobs, Annemie Maes & Bill Bultheel, Stefaan Quix, Jeroen Vandesande, Ester Venrooy & Hans Demeulenaere, Els Viaene & Plan B Performance & Visual Kitchen.

Happy New Flandres Festival Kortrijk is the latest addition to the Flandres Festival.  A music festival for the south-west of Flandres with the City of Kortrijk as centre. It's programme ranges from classical to contemporary music, music of the world to adventuruous concerts as well as sound art.

More information:
www.festival.be

Image: Klinkende stad, Jeroen Vandesande

Leuven - Museum M - When art and science meet: Parallellepipeda / Tina Gillen

PARALLELLEPIPEDA
January 28 - April 25, 2010

What happens when art and science meet? This was the point of departure when the Parallellepipeda research project was set up in 2007. For three years, eminent artists and scientists from K.U.Leuven and elsewhere met on the cutting edge of their curiosity concerning the true nature of images, sound and creativity, and what these things mean for us today.

Artists and scientists opened their worlds to one another. An intense dialogue took place in their studios and research laboratories. The results can be seen in the exhibition.

Artists: Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Ruth Loos, Wendy Morris,Carl Van Eyndhoven, Ronny Delrue, Nick Ervinck, Koen Vanmechelen

Scientists: Géry d'Ydewalle, Johan Wagemans (Laboratorium voor Experimentele Psychologie), Koen Van Laere (Nucleaire Geneeskunde), Pierre Delaere (Experimentele Oto-rino-laryngologie), Jean-Jacques Cassiman (Menselijke Erfelijkheid), Luc Vrielinck (Stomatologie, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg, Genk) 

Curator: EDITH DOOVE

TINA GILLEN
March 12 – May 2, 2010

The works on paper by Tina Gillen (Luxemburg) are for the most part figurative. They show fragments of reality that become abstract and strange by virtue of their schematic character. Gillen isolates elements of her own photos, which she then uses to make compositions that cover between two and three dimensions, between figuration and abstraction. In addition she also makes site-specific murals that often play with perspective and the history of the room in question. In M she presents new work, a large mural and works on canvas integrated in he exhibition spaces of the museum. 

More information:
www.mleuven.be

Image: Nick Ervinck – Niebloy, © Kristien Daem

Strombeek / Mechelen - BKSM - Mitja Tusek

CC Strombeek: February 26 - March 26, 2010
De Garage: April 03 - June 06, 2010

On Friday april 2 in De GARAGE in Mechelen opens the second part of the bkSM 9 project 'PANTALONE' by MITJA TUSEK. Until March 25 the public could enjoy part one in the cultural centre of Strombeek where the artist showed the monumental series 'As You Like It' inspired by the text by Shakespeare. It finally looks as if the work by Mitja Tusek, who has been living and working in Belgium for over twenty years, is set for a true revival.

For the presentation in Mechelen the artist will conceive a totally new architecture for the exhibition space where he will bring a sparkling survey of his consistent oeuvre. Without wanting to expand to retrospective proportions the focus of the exhibition will clearly be the paintings Mitja Tusek has made since the eighties. Nonetheless the artist will present 'Big Easy', a 15 meter long new work, where he questions illusion and painting through a continuous graphic meandering motive.

On this occasion a well documented and illustrated cahier will be published, interlaced with culinary recipes by master chef Michel Troisgros.

More information:
www.cultuurcentrummechelen.be
www.ccstrombeek.be/...

Image: Mitja Tusek, Victoria, early, 2006

Germany - Düsseldorf - K21 - ALBUM/TRACKS A - Ana Torfs

February 27 - July 18, 2010

With five large-format slide projections, several photo series, and a song project for the Internet, K21 presents the first museum-based overview of the work of Belgian artist Ana Torfs (born 1963 and, lives and works in Brussels).

Representation and visualisation, reality and fiction form the cornerstones of Ana Torfs' installations which consist of projected images (usually black and white slides) and texts.

In precisely choreographed audiovisual constellations Torfs brings to life literary, historical and political material. In these projects the artist works with actors who embody their roles in a demonstratively matter-of-fact and functional way. Documents on Joan d'Arc, a famous one act play by the symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck but also testimonies from Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht's murder trial serve as starting points for room-filling installations such as 'Du mentir-faux' (About Lying Falsehood), 2000, 'The Intruder', 2004, or 'Anatomy', 2006.

Ana Torfs has been practising and developing her method of subtly dissecting and superimposing places, people, voices and atmospheres for over fifteen years. In doing so, she draws on a repertoire of dramatic, photographic and cinematic techniques.

An extensive catalogue "ANA TORFS - ALBUM/TRACKS A+B", designed by Jurgen Persijn will appear in connection with the show. The catalogue is edited by Sabine Folie and Doris Krystof  and contains texts by Mieke Bal, Anselm Franke, Michael Glasmeier, Steven Jacobs, Friedrich Meschede, Kassandra Nakas and Catherine Robberechts and also an interview with Ana Torfs by Gabriele Mackert (Verlag Moderen Kunst, Nürnberg, germ./engl., 204 pages, circa 300 reproductions, 29,95 euro).

More information:
www.kunstsammlung.de

Image: Ana Torfs, The Intruder, 2004, Installationsansicht, Roomade, Brüssel, 2004, Installation mit Diaprojektion auf schwarzem Untergrund, synchronisierte Audiofassung, Dimensionen variabel, Courtesy of the artist, © Ana Torfs, 2009

Japan - Tokyo - void+ - Ives Maes - Progress

April 3 - 23, 2010

In April 2010 the work of Ives Maes will be on view at void+, an experimental art space in Tokyo. Ives Maes is a contemporary artist based in Antwerp, Belgium. Although Maes uses various mixed media, his main medium of choice is photography.

This exhibition showcases a series of photographs from one of his most well-known projects, where Maes stages familiar characters from science fiction movies at world exposition sites. The world exposition can be seen as a global event promoting world peace through exhibitions of art, technology and science from participating countries. The world exposition brings a sense of anticipation of a positive future full of hope. This subject is contrasted with characters from science fiction movies, which tend to be critical of overdeveloped technology and science with themes that foresees the future as a metaphor of human tragedy.

Maes showcases this contradistinction with a unique perspective through his photographs of familiar scenes with extra-terrestrials or characters, which one may perceive as "peculiar" and / or "comical." If artists are agents of social absurdity and truth like prophets, then Ives Maes is definitely one such artist. This exhibition introduces photographs of the European exposition sites from his photography series.

More information:
www.voidplus.jp

Image: Ives Maes, Melosport (Expo '58: Evaluation of the World for a more Humane World, 1958) Duratrans on acrylic, lightbox, 100 x 125 cm, 2009

Japan - Flanders Gallery - The space between us - Sarah Van Marcke

April 2 - 28, 2010

After participating in several group exhibitions in Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe, Sarah Van Marcke will now have a solo exhibition at the Flanders Center in Osaka. For Sarah Van Marcke, the search for the perfect location is a primary move when working on an image. A formula for the image Sarah creates is the balance between three contextual pillars: architecture, landscape and object. Subject to the image are empty urban or suburban spaces.

She will present 24 photographs from the series "Untitled" and "Places" together with 1 video, and will have an artist talk on Saturday April 3rd at the Center.

More information:
www.flanders.jp

Image:  Sarah Van Marcke, Untitled (Foreign Affairs), 2009 ©Sarah Van Marcke

Japan - Kanazawa - 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art - Jan Fabre & Funakoshi Katsura

April 29 - August 31, 2010

Jan Fabre (lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium) and Funakoshi Katsura (lives and works in Tokyo) are artists who have become highly visible on the contemporary art scene for their superb activities in the area of sculptural representation. This large-scale duo exhibition includes historical artworks, each of which symbolizes a religious concept that the two artists share as their common background.

Taking a bird's-eye-view of Fabre's formative expression through "Triptych: The Crucifixion, flanked by the kneeling donor and his wife," "Mater Dolorosa," masterpieces of Flemish art originated in Flanders, Fabre's roots, it is questioned how his world of expression is related to the Christian culture and spirituality in the background on one hand. On the other hand with a bird's-eye-view of Funakoshi's world of expression through "Hibo Kannon" symbolizing the history and development of the reception of Western modernism, the exhibition questions Japanese unique religious faith breathed in Funakoshi's world of expression.

By verifying the two artists' worlds of expression in contrast, the exhibition tries to approach the root of spirituality of each of the East and the West from various angles. Touching on the diversity of modernism in the West, an approach is made to review aspects of the reception of modernism in Japan that is located on the margin in the Western-oriented worldview. Another question that is brought to light is how religious art that seems to have been divided and severed from society in the previous century has been handed down in the undercurrents of contemporary art in the context of advanced globalization in the world.

More information:
www.kanazawa21.jp
www.angelos.be

Image: Jan FABRE, 'I let myself drain (dwarf)',  2007; Photo : Attilio Maranzano; Copyright : Angelos

Jordan - Amman - Makan Art Space - Hamas, Mossad and Cucumbers - Tom Bogaert

March 23 - 31, 2010

In 2009, Tom Bogaert embarked on a Grand Tour of artist residencies in the Near East. He is currently working on 'Impression, proche orient' (IPO) which is a geopolitical art project with production and research referencing new Arabs, political incompatibilities, artistic identity and cucumbers.

The first tangible results of the artist's work on 'Impression, proche orient' will be on view at Makan where the artist will soon complete his first IPO residency.

The starting point for Bogaert's 'Jordan Cucumber Project' is a take on what Khalid Mishal, the leader of Hamas, thinks of Jordanian cucumbers.

'Kompressor,' is an exploration of the intersections between enlightened absolutism, badges used by Mercedes-Benz for their super-charged engines and reading between automotive rear window defroster lines.

More information:
www.tombogaert.org
www.makanhouse.net/...

Image: © 2010 Tom Bogaert

USA - Houston - Station Museum of Contemporary Art - Welcome to Belgium - Charif Benhelima

March 12 - May 30, 2010

Welcome to Belgium, Charif Benhelima's first major solo exhibition in the United States, displays 58 photographs, besides personal statements, decree definitions and an historic document.

Welcome to Belgium took nine years to be fully completed and resulted in an homonymous book, dealing with the sentiment of being a foreigner. Beginning with the artist's own portrait and ending with one of his mother is an indication of the work's autobiographical nature. In somber black and white, the photographs enunciate, as the research advances, a range from an optimism characteristic of the ingenuous through to the canceling out of the many people who are living clandestinely as a result of the lack of documentation, imprisoned between worlds. The artist distances himself conceptually from the notion of a photo-event: what is documented was less what happened in each image and, rather, the sentiment and the ideas represented, which are not visible and that, in general, one avoids examining and understanding. Moving from one image to another gives the overall photographic work, supported by verbal paratexts, a complexity of meanings, from the personal to the historic, where the ultimate question resides in this feeling of not belonging to or not corresponding to that which a given society appreciates. Showing photographs taken between 1990 and 1999, Welcome to Belgium is an album of Benhelima's own trajectory, a portrait of his process of development as an artist and as a man.

Curators: James Harithas  en Alan Schnitger.

Welcome to Belgium is part of the 'FotoFest 2010 Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Arts'  and is organized by Ann & James Harithas, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston.

More information:
www.stationmuseum.com
www.fotofest.org/...

Image: © Charif Benhelima, San DAMIANO #5, Brussels 1997-1998, B&W fiber print, 80 cm x 120 cm / Courtesy of the artist .