Projet Midi

<< BACK

PROJET MIDI WEBSITE

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT >>

PAST PROJECTS >>

FORTHCOMING / L'APRES MODERNE / 20 SEPTEMBER - 25 OCTOBER 2008

l’après moderne

projet midi
3 Rue du Rectangle 1080 Brussels

l’après moderne 
3 Rue du Rectangle,
1080 Brussels

Curated by Charles Danby 
21 September – 25 October 2008 
Preview/ Vernissage 20th September 19.00 –22.00

Athanasios Argianas, Jacqueline Devreux, Hansjoerg Doubliar, Neil Hamon, Karin Hanssen, Gregor Hildebrandt, Bruce Ingram, Sven’t Jolle, Michelle McKeown, Sadie Murdoch, Flore Nové-Josserand, Dallas Seitz, Denis Stuart, Karen Tang, Estelle Thompson

l’après moderne highlights a contemporary interest in the modern, as a pan-European phenomenon, presenting works by artists from France, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and Greece.
The works draw on codes of visual language that echo Modernist points of alteration and advance, motifs concurrent with the Bauhaus, the Constructivists, Suprematists and Surrealists, but emergent through contemporary concerns. l’après moderne discloses an aftermath of modernity, its debris, but one positioned in a reconstruction of language, through optimism and beyond the reach of postmodern reference, in contemporary art practice at the dawn of the 21st century.

The paintings of Estelle Thompson and Hansjoerg Dobliar draw on systems of geometry aligned to Bauhaus and Suprematism sentiment, exploring in each case points of personal narrative through configurations of architectural and mathematical form and manipulations of colour. Karin Hanssen surveys modernity as a social model, drawing on codes of contemporary living that while framed by motifs pulled from the near-past are systematically reconfigured within the sphere of the here-and-now. Jacqueline Devreux provokes a point of collective memory, her painting Deux Frères while obscuring its photorealist sources through layers of paint pulled across its surface, constructs a point of contemporary memoriam through the codification of a past era. Adding to this Denis Stuart introduces gestural strokes configured through abstract-expressionist experimentation, affirming a canonical approach to the modernist legacy, one concurrent to Dobliar’s paintings that also serves to underpin Bruce Ingram's quasi- tribal sculptures.
Tribalism and exoticism also play a role in Dallas Seitz’s sculpture Ate, a work that is literally a cannibal’s head and the result of working with found objects in a Duchampian sense. Exoticism in the modernist sense is also the inspiration to Sadie Murdoch’s photograph, Colour Model. Here the historical narrative of the real life love affairs of the dancer Josephine Baker with both Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier became the inspiration to two architectural models, which are striped black and white buildings, the Corbusier model was realised as the Villa Savoie in Poissy, whereas Loos’ building was never realised. Central to Murdoch’s photo is the iconic bust of Baker. Painted across in black and white stripes, it propositions multiple readings of feminism, modernist aspiration and contemporary multiculturalism. Karen Tang’s sculpture Siren Stephen and his Mirror plays on current notions of feminity in gay cultures whilst surfeiting to this the aesthetics of Art Brut. The mirror as surface further appears in Gregor Hildebrandt’s conceptual painting Schweres Metall (silber), a canvas constructed of silver-leaf squares, geometrically composed, the work holds changing fields of colour within its both reflective and non-reflective surface. Situated opposite is Sadie Murdoch’s colour photograph Reich in Reverse, a work that adopts multiple points of reflection to construct a dislocated portrait of Bauhaus architect Lily Reich.
Neil Hamon’s The Buck Stops Here, a photograph of a stag presented on taxidermised hoofs offers a point of linguistic double, a gameplay between elements, of trophy and of other that stretches and discloses points of surrealist invention. In contrast Sven't Jolle’s sculptures are life-size renditions of Middle Eastern artefacts that animate a site of political contention and origin by way of a frenetically mobilised economy of contemporary global movement, whilst their physical appearance further exposes types of relics readily used in sci-fi films as reminders of past civilizations. Further drawn to a site of modernist legacy are Michelle McKeown’s paintings of fractals, systems of infinitely divisible matter that point to the most advanced points of contemporary scientific experimentation, characterised by the recently opened particle accelerator at Cern. In turn Athanasios Argianas’s sculptural work Lyrical Machine (for 3 Voices, Two Durations Oscillating but Converging) draws on compositional elements of discord and harmony within the formulation of music, reconciling these elements through points of interlinked geometry, both regular and abstracted. Further expanding points of contemporary encounter, acoustically, visually and perceptually is Flore Nové-Josserand’s Corner Piece which reveals beyond its formalist black gloss exterior an internal glow of optically illusive light drawn from an internal structure of mixed formal identity, marked and grounded by a kinetic armature of dislocated and spliced movement.
l’après moderne or aftermodern draws on a site of contemporary visual art practice concurrent to modernist sentiment and marked by open constructions of motif that transgress temporal and aesthetic catergorisation in their delineation of the post-produced contemporary.

Further Details:

For further details please contact: info@projetmidi.be

The participating artists have all shown internationally. Please request information on specific artists or representing galleries from Projet Midi.
Projet Midi is a not-for-profit organisation based in London and Brussels. The exhibition space is based in the centre of Brussels and is used for temporary exhibitions approximately twice a year.

www.projetmidi.be

contacts:
curatorial / commissariat d’exposition :
Charles Danby (English) +44 7765 224 979 look@charliedanby.co.uk
Bea de Souza (English/Deutsch) +447908 910277 info@theagencygallery.co.uk
Nathalie Vincent (Vlaams/Français) +32 479 247 446 info@nathalievincent.be

Presse:

Zoe McDonald (English) +44 7814 219 295 ginzo82@hotmail.com
Nathalie Vincent (Vlaams/Français) +32 479 247 446 info@nathalievincent.be
Karine Marchand (Français/English) +44 7505 745 017 karine.marchand@gmail.com

Logistique:

Bea de Souza info@theagencygallery.co.uk
Karine Marchand karine.marchand@gmail.com
Denis Stuart denisstuart@gmx.de

Installation view of l’après moderne, Projet Midi, Brussels