bio

The work of Anouk De Clercq always combines two or more media and forms of art. Her work includes images, text, architecture and music, which she brings together in the form of spatial installations. With this De Clercq seeks to expand video art practice. In her films De Clercq examines the audiovisual potential of computer language in order to create alternative worlds. Despite their strongly architectonic character, these are not cold 3D spaces, but sensuous inner landscapes that belong to a world of imagination.
Although they contain traces of reality, these are mental images which provide an escape from reality. With these virtual worlds, De Clercq hopes to provoke an insight in our daily environments.

Her work has been shown at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, New York Film and Video Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Transmediale, Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement, among others.

Anouk De Clercq currently teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, KASK.

Solo Exhibitions (selection)

2013

  • Z33, Hasselt (Belgium)

2010

  • Mediaroom, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

2009

  • 'Oops, wrong planet', Museum Dr. Guislain, Gent (Belgium)

2008

  • 'Seven Screens', Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (Belgium)
  • 'Motion for Newton', Osram Art Projects/ Seven Screens, Munich (Germany)

2006

  • 'Log', Safn, Reykjavik (Iceland)

2005

  • 'Anouk De Clercq with Anton Aeki, Dominique Callewaert, Ryoji Ikeda,...', Netwerk Galerij, Aalst (Belgium)
  • 'Picture this', Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (Belgium)
  • 'Log', Crown Gallery, Brussels (Belgium)
  • 'Pang', Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (Poland)

2004

  • 'Log 2000-2004', Audioframes, Kortrijk (Belgium)
  • 'Wunderland Unframed', Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

2002

  • 'Les Hivernales', s.l., Montreal (Canada)
  • 'Anouk De Clercq', Matrix Art Projects, Brussels (Belgium)
  • 'Sonar', Looking Glass, Brussels (Belgium)

cv

Group exhibitions (selection)

2008

'Borderline', Shanghai (China)
'Discovering Slowness', M'ARS centre of contemporary art, Moscow (Russia)

2007

'Digital Art from Belgium', Telic Arts Exchange, Los Angeles (U.S.A.)
'Artes Digitales', Buda Kunstencentrum, Kortrijk (Belgium)
'Discovering Slowness', National Centre of Photography, St-Petersburg (Russia)
'(In)visible sounds', Montevideo, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
'Snapshot', Tijdelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
'Conjonctions', Espace Piano Nobile, Geneva (Zwitserland)
'The Leading Thread', Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos (Spain)
'Presentation of the integration of a work of art', Netwerk, Aalst (Belgium)

2006

'Borderline', Beijing (China)

2005

'Contour', 2nd Biennial for Videoart, Mechelen (Belgium)
'Bevreemdende verkenningen', Sint-Lukasgalerij, Brussels (Belgium)

2004

'Mov.', Concertgebouw, Bruges (Belgium)
'Wunderland Unframed', Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
'Oogst/Harvest/Récolte', Caermersklooster, Ghent (Belgium)
'Feel the Young', Z33, Hasselt (Belgium)
'Undercurrent', Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul (Turkey)
'The Alps', Netwerk Galerij, Aalst (Belgium)
'Essential Emptiness', Beursschouwburg, Brussels (Belgium)

2003

'Prix Jeune Peinture Belge 2003', BOZAR, Brussels (Belgium)
'Overload and Organization', Boston Centre for the Arts, Boston (USA)
'Anouk De Clercq & Dany Deprez', Cultuurcentrum Strombeek, Brussels (Belgium)
'Wav.', Concertgebouw, Bruges (Belgium)

2002

'Secret Gardens', Tacktoren, Kortrijk (Belgium)

2001

'Anouk De Clercq & Sean Kerr', Moving Image Centre, Auckland (New Zealand)

biblio

Auguste Orts : Correspondence (2010) published by Sternberg Press & M HKA
Oops wrong planet (2009) published by MER.PaperKunsthalle
Log (2005) published by Auguste Orts
Seven Screens (2011) Hatje Cantz (DE)
Animation Practice Production Process (2011) Intellect Journals (AU) author
Resonance (2010) Inventie/Shanghai Electronic Arts Festival (BE/CN) author
Event Horizon (2010) Centre for Contemporary Photography (AU)
Body Sound (2010) Centre Pompidou/Liedts-Meesen Foundation (FR/BE)
Fantastic Illusions (2009) Inventie/Shanghai Electronic Arts Festival (BE/CN)
Ophelia : Sehnsucht, melancholia and desire for death (2009) De Buitenkant (NL)
A Prior : artists on artists (2009) Mark (BE) author
Re-Imagining Animation (2008) AVA Academia/Thames&Hudson (ES/UK/AU)
Osram Art Projects (2008) Osram (DE)
A Prior #16 (2008) Mark (BE)
Cross-Over, kunst, media en technologie in Vlaanderen (2008) Lannoo (BE)
Collection of Flemish Community 2002-2006 (2008) Flemish Community (BE)
In Transit : 5 years of visual art in Brussels (2008) Flemish Community Commission (BE)
Markiezin zkt Kunst (2008) Gynaika (BE)
VJ Audio-Visual Art + VJ Culture (2006) D-FUSE (UK)
Netwerk Jaarboek 05-06 (2006) Netwerk (BE)
Artes Digitales (2007) Inventie/Buda Kunstencentrum (BE)
Discovering Slowness (2007) KW14 (NL)
El Hilo Conductor (2007) Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos (ES)
Update (2006) Liedts-Meesen Foundation (BE)
Contour (2005) Biennial for Videoart (BE)
Z33 Jaarboek 02-04 (2004) Platform Beeldende Kunsten Limburg (BE)
Prijs Jonge Belgische Schilderkunst (2003) BOZAR (BE)
Provinciale Prijs voor Beeldende Kunst (2003) Caermersklooster (BE)

2011

  • Academia Belgica, Rome (Italy)

2010

  • Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (France)

2006

  • Platform China, Beijing (China)

2005

  • SIM, Association of Icelandic Visual Artists, Reykjavik (Iceland)

1996

  • department of visual culture, Brown University, Providence (RI) (USA)

1995

  • The Wooster Group, New York (NY) (USA)

works

 

Conductor

2004 Anouk De Clercq

A lightning conductor appears as a musical conductor for the cloud cover. At the core of an increasingly threatening blaze of fire and a whistling wind, a minuscule light has final call, until the violence of heaven discharges abruptly and the lightning conductor throws it all off-screen.
This video was made in the framework of "Title Safe II", a project by Walter Verdin in which he invites artists to make a short video with 125bpm as a rhythmic rule.

 

'Kernwasser Wunderland' presented in Z33, Hasselt (B)

2004 Anouk De Clercq

'Kernwasser Wunderland' opens up a deserted landscape in a pregnant environment, a biotope subject to specific laws and its own ecology filled according to the intuitive logic of the unconscious and the imaginary.
The basis for the content is the great nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in April 1986. As a consequence of the great danger of radiation the whole area was declared inaccessible and was closed off with fencing and checkpoints. The radiation cannot be smelt or tasted, only a geigercounter can confirm its presence.
This abandonment and brooding emptiness inspired us to reflect on nature and technology, in a fusion of sensual sound and image of both digital and natural worlds.

 

Horizon

2004 Anouk De Clercq

In this video installation, Anouk De Clercq utilises high-technology and pure forms to establish a field of perspective depth, inviting the viewer to explore its agile volume. We arrive in a minimalist landscape dominated by the suggestion that something is out there in the distance, behind the horizon.

 

'Portal' presented in CC Strombeek, Grimbergen (B)

2003 Anouk De Clercq

'Portal' unfolds a space where you can drop your guard: a rhythmical, geometrical landscape, a soothing place made from sloping shapes and whispering sounds.
Anouk De Clercq depicts an 'interior landscape', a mental space built of cool shades of grey and fathomless horizons, rotating, tilting and caressing. An exploration of the limits of the utopian and the inner nature, in a longing for a place of enlightenment: "here never alone".
The video was made on the occasion of Secret Gardens, a concept of centre for the arts Limelight and cultural manifestation anno'02, for which several artists had been assigned to design a secret garden at various locations in the city of Kortrijk.

 

'Building' presented on the videowindow outside of the Concertgebouw in Bruges (B)

2003 Anouk De Clercq

Shafts of light and the camera are moving through the dark as in a glissando. Flat, sharply cut forms appear in black-and-white and high definition. They feel their way along expanses of wall, opening up storeys, windows and doors, and break down on floors, stairs and columns. In this way, according to a controlled choreography upheld by the music of Anton Aeki, a truly architectural experience is created on the screen. Like a constructivist audiovisual mobile, the building reveals itself and is being documented as in an architect's dream. In other words: as a spatial and atmospheric starting point for users to start leaving their marks on it. "Building" is inspired by the new concerthall in Bruges and thereby also pays homage to the work of Robbrecht&Daem, the Belgian architects' collective which is well known for such exploits as the new Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam and the Aue-pavilions for Documenta IX in Kassel.

  

Portal

2002 Anouk De Clercq

'Portal' unfolds a space where you can drop your guard: a rhythmical, geometrical landscape, a soothing place made from sloping shapes and whispering sounds.
Anouk De Clercq depicts an 'interior landscape', a mental space built of cool shades of grey and fathomless horizons, rotating, tilting and caressing. An exploration of the limits of the utopian and the inner nature, in a longing for a place of enlightenment: "here never alone".
The video was made on the occasion of Secret Gardens, a concept of centre for the arts Limelight and cultural manifestation anno'02, for which several artists had been assigned to design a secret garden at various locations in the city of Kortrijk.

 

Building

2003 Anouk De Clercq, Auguste Orts vzw

Shafts of light and the camera are moving through the dark as in a glissando. Flat, sharply cut forms appear in black-and-white and high definition. They feel their way along expanses of wall, opening up storeys, windows and doors, and break down on floors, stairs and columns. In this way, according to a controlled choreography upheld by the music of Anton Aeki, a truly architectural experience is created on the screen. Like a constructivist audiovisual mobile, the building reveals itself and is being documented as in an architect's dream. In other words: as a spatial and atmospheric starting point for users to start leaving their marks on it. "Building" is inspired by the new concerthall in Bruges and thereby also pays homage to the work of Robbrecht&Daem, the Belgian architects' collective which is well known for such exploits as the new Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam and the Aue-pavilions for Documenta IX in Kassel.

 

Petit Palais

2002 Anouk De Clercq

A high electronic tone demands our attention and sparks off a journey through a computer-drawn space. We land up in a minimalist landscape dominated by the suggestion that something is out there in the distance. The horizon allows us a first glimpse of rectangles which, when we come closer, define buildings as in a city, or walls as in an indoor space. Rhythmically and temporized to the music by ryoji ikeda, we are being steered through the representation, after which the next image is already twinkling seductively in the distance.
This contemplative and absorbing work was made for a presentation by the belgian fashiondesigner Bruno Pieters at the Petit Palais in Paris.
The combination of music, visual art, fashion, choreography and architecture is typical of the work of anouk de clercq, and of a generation of eclectic artists and designers from flanders who, since the 1990s, have been successful in finding an international podium.

 

Whoosh

2001 Anouk De Clercq

Motion pictures, motion graphics and music interplay in a poetic reflection on our accelerated age.
Simple geometric patterns, animation and live elements reflect the artists' inclination towards mixed artforms.

 

Motion For Stockhausen

2000 Anouk De Clercq

Conceived originally as a backdrop projection for the dance performance 'Chorée', this video is in itself a study on choreography. the image source is the oldest Belgian film footage, 'Film Médicaux' (1904) shot by Arthur Van Gehuchten, belgian anatomist, neurologist and pioneer of clinical cinematography. The movements of hysterical patients are carefully reframed in a dignifying way.
'Motion for Stockhausen' was initially made as a part of 'Chorée', a dancepiece produced by le bureau des arts with a choreography of Johanne Saunier and lighting by Jim Clayburg, with music by James Dillon performed by Garth Knox and music by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Renaud De Putter performed by Stephan Ginsburgh.

 

Anouk De Clercq

º1971, Gent (B)
T: 02/733.88.94
M: 0479/77.18.45
E: anouk@portapak.be
W: www.portapak.be
W: www.augusteorts.be
Van Campenhoutstraat 35
1000 Brussel, België

categories

artists| media art| video art

organisations (3 found)

Atelier Mediakunst - KASK
Auguste Orts vzw
Hogeschool Gent - KASK