From Love, With Brussels

June 2008,

opening June 5, 19:00 with peformances and more!

Come and meet up with the folks from Brussels, to link up for July and our 'Return of the Dutch'!

Specially conceived for the your-space platform, From Love, with Brussels, is a proposal by Komplot, which revolves around the very toponimy of this open institutional experiment : « your-space », a museal space that becomes the space of it’s temporary guests and visitors.

As a mobile curatorial platform, infiltrating the public space and / existing structures to foster artistic projects which trespass the usual disciplinary and borders, Komplot vzw likes to explore uncertain environments and fluctuating contexts, new territories and original integrated forms of expressions.
Komplot has always been keen in the development of a strategy of production and diffusion of residual pieces and traces for the events it organised.

For From Love, With Brussels, the objective is therefore to presents art works, which convey implicitely and adopt the same infiltrational strategy, both in terms of display and reception.

The statement also acts as a balanced counterpart and response to The Return of the Dutch your space’s special project of residency in Brussels, which, departing from the rough space offered by Komplot, a garage space, will operate with direct ramifications in the public space.
Together, the two projects operate as comments of the process of cultural exchanges and cross-seminations between our two neighboring countries and whose histories have long been intertwined.

In a way, beyond their general and specific grasps, the works integrated From Love, With Brussels, also act as metaphors of specific cultural clichés .
Extensive, seminal and integrated Flemish immigration in the Low Countries of the XVI-XVIIth centuries vs. the Dutch more structured and political occupation of Belgium at the beginning of XIXth century.

The following artists are invited to create new works or present adaptation of existing works produced by Komplot for the occasion. They have ben chosen their infiltrating and perturbating qualities :

Rossella Biscotti / Kevin Van Braak
The artists will present for the first time in the public space, in the Netherlands, their project The good life.
At this stage it consists of a van transformed into a semi-mobile architectural structure whose progressive shapes form an evolutive response to it’s organic use and to the changing aesthetic requisites of the context where it is displayed. Eventually the expansion of this semi-mobile sculptural installation will lead to the construction of a house in Salento a Southern region of Puglia.

High and low culture meet in the work of Aline Bouvy (L) / John Gillis (B). In their paintings, installations, performances or videos, they develop an eclectic “Gesamtkunstwerk” approach where post-punk or contemporary pop music references confront with elements reminiscent of a more established cultural tradition.

Simona Denicolai (I) & Ivo Provoost (B) will diffuse the sound piece ‘Nobody’ that was created for the project Vollevox, in the national fine arts museum in Brussels, in 2004. The sound piece is a recording of an “impromptu” performative concert of cell phone rings.
It is to be used as a “jingle” tone for public announcements in the museum, and at the opening and closure times.
Denicolai Provoost have also infiltrated the communication of the show by designing the invitation and integrating in it a “mental image” to be spread in the public space. The sentence will also be sung by the curators during the opening of the show.

Sofie Haesaerts (B) develops a sculptural and installational practice often fragmented and integrated in the architecture.
For With Love, from Brussels, she will present a slide show of sculptural infiltration she will have integrated in the collections of the Museum. Photographed and transferred into slides these ephemeral images will act as the testimony of evolving
and evanescent sculptural gestures.

The pin My boss is Flemish by Kosten Koper (UK) will be worn and distributed by Komplot’s artists and curators on the evening of the vernissage, then sold in the bookshop. This work is a sardonic joke about the Belgian situation by a foreigner living in Brussels.
During the opening, Kosten Kooper will also, in collaboration with Douglas Park (UK), organize a live radio broadcast, accessible with headphone set in your-sapce for the rest duration of the exhibition.

Grégoire Motte (F) works on the interstices, in the spaces exisiting between or around the artworks in an exhibition, often with elements taken out or subverted from the original context.
For with Brussels, from Love, he will use the peripherical spaces of some lavatories to realize a pictorial seductive installation.

Claudia Radulescu (Ro) will show a sculptural neon installation named Incitation à la Vie privée
Seductive, straightforward and semantically ambiguous, it consists of the artist’s first name with her Belgian cell phone number. It is to be displayed in the museum in an area of external visibility, in relationship with the public space.

The book Europäer by Kurt Ryslavy (A) is a self-referential text by the artist, translated into 36 languages spoken in Europe. The artist tells the story of his wine trading, the main ground and topic of his artistic occupation and production. The borders between the two deliberately fluctuate, when he shows documents as paintings or integrates invoices and lists in his work.
The edition is to be displayed in the restaurant of the museum and will be for sale in the book shop of the museum.

Christophe Terlinden (B)
En connaissance de Cause
This installation conceived by the artist for the eponymous exhibition in le Bonheur, brussels, consisted of a sculptural mountain, made of crumpled paper and of large drawings representing mountains.
A « public space » sculpture, to be placed on the street in front of the gallery-shop would act as an « edition » supplier : a candy distributor filled with crumpled drawings in plastic eggs, available for one euro.
When unfolded, the sheets displayed further drawings of mountains, all different :
With their wrinkled surface, mimicking the rocky surface of the mountains, and playing with shade and light effects, the drawings were conferred with a material texture.
Ìt is this candy distributor that will be shown in the Van Abbe, but filled with a new series of drawings

Michael Van den Abeele (B)
‘Asbak’ is a series of decorative ashtrays that the artist recuperated to place them on plinths in cement; One of them will be shown in your-space, along with a video animation and a drawing.
Three video animations are also presented on a monitor in the Museum’s cafetaria.

Freek Wambacq (B) created ‘Stadium IV’ for Komplot’s Garage in Brussels as the first three modular elements of a “in progress” stone sculpture, aiming at reproducing, in a fragmented evolutive fashion, the whole line of starting blocks of the original stadium of Olympia in Greece.
A new modular element has been especially conceived for With Brussels, From Love.
Freek’s ambition is to create a new modular element and, when possible, to leave them behind integrated in the public space.
A list of traditional sauces accompanying French “frites” in Belgium will act as mental colour palette, and is to be distributed in stacks of photocopies in different locations of the Museum

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