October 9, 2010 – January 2, 2011

After more than two years of preparations, the ambitious solo project Sea of Tranquillity by multidisciplinary artist Hans Op de Beeck has its premiere at Le Grand Café in France.

The Sea of Tranquillity is an imaginary cruise liner, which serves as a metaphor for our modern attitude to time and space, our interpretation of the concepts of work and leisure time, and, finally, the way in which we deal with our mortality. As such, it has a complex and poetic charge, but also presents a touch of irony regarding the superficial, safe and unimaginative leisure opportunities that are on offer on board the ship.

The exhibition based around this fictitious ship will be presented through a variety of media. Besides a mid-length short film, a combination of live video recordings of actors with digitally created surroundings in which the viewer pays a virtual visit to the strange, slightly ominous cruise liner at night, and a large sculptural scale version of the ship, several other sculptures and a series of large black-and-white watercolours featuring places and people associated with the fictitious port town, shipyard and cruise liner, will be on show.

'Sea of Tranquillity' is a broad project dealing with utopia, history, economics, sociology, meaning and our problematic age of false values, improper categories and unethical relationships. Later on, the exhibition will travel to Belgium (ARGOS, Brussels), Switzerland (Kunstmuseum Thun) and Spain (Centro de Arte, Burgos).

 More information:
www.grandcafe-saintnazaire.fr

 Image: Hans Op de Beeck, Sea of Tranquillity, 2010