Monthly Archives: February 2011

brancolina :: shadé #2 photo book

This is the second edition of the Shadé gallery‘s annual photo book. The selection is made of the most awarded photos that were in 2010 selected for the group’s curated exhibitions. Special thanks to all photographers who gave me permission to publish their works in the book, Nirvana Geudjelian Herrera for writing an intro and to the curators of exhibitions: barbera*, Steffen Tuck, mengwen29, jurek d., Rainer Schäffer, daruma*, Fernando Prats, backroom.angel, piblo, tapa, tlate hiin, Jacob Schere, tomyxyz, James Withey, Black Dog Designs, caecilia mettela, yanomano, Josean Prado, Nirvana SQ, James Kiong, spleen*, my.third.eye and Dreasan

Click on image to preview all pages.
To order click here

Book summary: 69 photos, 146 pages, 8×10″
Art directing, concept and Shadé gallery’s administrator: Brancolina
Group’s logo design: Brancolina and Fernando Prats

waxy pith :: an evening of tenderness and amusement

WAXY PITH is organizing in Brussels An evening of tenderness and amusement featuring works by 4 artists:

JACOB WREN
SPOKEN WORD: the author will read from his recently published book Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed (Pedlar press)

Set in a dystopian near-future, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is a novel – a kind of post-capitalist soap opera – about a group of people who regularly attend ‘the meetings’. At the meetings they have agreed to talk, and only talk, about how to re-ignite the left, for fear if they were to do more, if they were to actually engage in real acts of resistance or activism, they would be arrested, imprisoned or worse. Revenge Fantasies is a book about community. It is also a book about fear.

Review by Chris Kraus: “Jacob Wren’s work has always explored the dissonance between psychodynamics – which reveals the ambiguities and possibilities of human behavior – and the deadening psychic economy of capital. In Revenge Fantasies, he demonstrates how deeply literary these concerns are. Whether depicting the intricate mood-shifts of a triangulated romance, or chronicling the inchoate optimism of marathon group meetings designed to identify ‘what went wrong’ with the left, or recasting the recent political past as dystopian sci-fi, the novel is fascinating, lurid and highly accomplished, evoking the best of Colette, Robert Musil and Julio Cortazar.”

Review by Chicago Centre for Literature and Photography

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TIM DE KEERSMAECKER
SHORT FILM: Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde, 18’0″

A man relieves himself from his night time job as a warehouseman by pursuing his greatest passion: hunting. But sometimes nature is tough and unpredictable. Die Vögelein Schweigen im Walde (The Birds in the Forest remain Silent) is a film about loneliness, the craving for dominance and the search for a meaningful interpretation of existence.

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KURT RYSLAVY
PERFORMANCE: An Act in Two Parts

Excerpt from text about the artist, by Hans Theys: It is as if the real Kurt Ryslavy is hiding behind all these layers, like the theatre director of the old days who invested in his own productions and followed the events on stage and in the auditorium from behind the ingeniously sliding coulisses. It is also possible that there is no director at all … You can try to look at Ryslavy’s work and enjoy the way humour and seriousness overlap in a game with the representative effect of objects and images.

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RAPHAEL ABSOLONNE
MUSIC: Spookhuisje

RifRaf magazine: “SPOOKHUISJE is the nom de plume of Brussels musician Raphael Absolonne. His intriguing instrumental music is a meditative melting pot of psychedelic drones, Indian raga (not to be confused with ragga) and experimental guitar playing that are one step beyond the sahara-tunes of Tamikrest.”

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Individual presentations will occur consecutively over the course of the evening.
Event address: 22 Place Van Hoegaerde 1081 Brussels
Time: 01 March 2011, 19.30 – 22h

www.waxypith.com

tatiana zugazagoitia :: la mirada de ulises

Directing: Tatiana Zugazagoitia and Sebastián Castagna

Choreography: Tatiana Zugazagoitia

Music: Sebastián Castagna

Dancers: Tatiana Zugazagoitia, Fátima Nuñez, Ana Clara Flores and Uri Campos Ruiz

Video and trailer production: Jorge Carlos Cortazar

waxy pith :: new platform for the contemporary arts

WAXY PITH is a seriously new platform for the contemporary arts, functioning in Brussels, Oslo, and further afield. WAXY PITH nurtures genuine artistic practice in which the essence of the work is palpable. Possessing a decidedly itinerant format within a dynamic organic structure, WAXY PITH presents striking works in varying contexts.

Works presented by WAXY PITH are imbued with extraordinary depth, created by artists possessing a rigorous sense of individuality and integrity; the works are expansive, innately poetic, resonant. All creative genres are embraced; presented are important, unfamiliar or undiscovered works of an exceptional standard, their inherent meaningfulness is derived from the nature and quality of the work itself. WAXY PITH deems that the intrinsic content of a work of art defines its true value.

The presenting and selective interweaving of visual art, performance, spoken word, music, dance, film, literature, and other forms of merited creative expression, introduce into the programme a rich repertoire of material, while the formation of selective collaborations brings further dimensionality. By way of a finely tuned curatorial process, cross-links are continually forged, ever widening the range of artists, galleries, and private individuals with whom WAXY PITH works.

Who it is

Jodie Hruby is the creative force at WAXY PITH. As an architect, artist, curator, writer, critic, poet, and catalyst, Jodie treats the WAXY PITH platform as an extension of her own artistic practice, curating a complex programme of activity, selecting and working closely with the artists. Prior to founding WAXY PITH, Jodie created and developed Naked State, a platform housed in a downtown Brussels gallery space. There she directed and curated a varied programme that included exhibitions, collaborations, performances, dance, music and film.

Olve Sande is a collaborative partner at WAXY PITH. A visual artist based in Oslo, he is also the facilitator for WAXY PITH presentations in Norway.

Deborah Coûteaux is the top assistant at WAXY PITH. She performs a plethora of functions essential to the successful operation of the platform.

Members are our precious loves, sincerely and enthusiastically supporting and contributing to the programme in multifarious ways.

JODIE HRUBY
OLVE SANDE
DEBORAH COÛTEAUX
GASTON MESKENS
SIET RAEYMAKERS
NICK DEFOUR
FISHER PHILLIPS
SETON BEGGS
GEORGES PETITJEAN
DANIELE LEVORATO
ADA RAJSZYS
MCCLOUD ZICMUSE
PHILIP JANSSENS
ROBERT SUERMONDT
FLORIS VERBEECK
BRANCOLINA

CONTACT INFO:
WAXY PITH (HQ)
RUE DE L’ARBRE 4
1000 BRUSSELS
BELGIUM
+32 478 298 483
info@waxypith.com

www.waxypith.com

gilbert garcin :: manipulated photography as correspondence between reality and illusion

La certitude

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Rien n’est parfait

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Accueil

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Etant donné le voisinnage (d’aprés Marcel Duchamps)

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La continuité

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At the age of sixty-five Gilbert Garcin retired from his lamp-making business in Marseille and took up photography. There is a common expectancy that a contemporary artist has to be young to be innovative, this is not the case. Garcin’s work is just as fresh as someone young, but he has the advantage of informing his work with his wisdom and experience. His nostalgic ‘lifetime of narrative’ explores and shares his questions and view on life with others. He states ‘This is the principal and most profound reason I take photographs. I am not out to demonstrate something. My sole motivation stems from the need I feel – that we all feel, to varying degrees – to communicate with the world around us.’

His playful, humorous, black and white photomontages create a miniature world, a ‘little inner theatre’ based on the idea of ‘the absurdity of the human condition’ by ‘making works out of tiny stories that recycle personal defeats and failures’. Garcin introduces a character onto the ‘stage’ naming him ‘Mr. Everyone’. He is ‘the man who is an image’- Literally. This, like Anthony Gormley, is always himself. Garcin photographs himself in different positions and then cuts these out and places them in his small handmade set. It is fascinating how his small scale depictions can successfully capture the bigger ideas of philosophy. Interestingly, his work has been used to illustrate philosophy textbooks. He plays an ‘anonymous hero’ for us to identify with, providing a universal display of our own traits which in turn, encourages us to think about our humanity. It is more about the ‘preposterous idea of making his thoughts visible’ rather than forcing his opinion on the audience: ‘I’m not trying to get a message across with my images. I’m not saying “this is the way things are” but rather, “this is the way I feel them”.’ (edit from Research on a Contemporary Artist by Rachel Spencer Smith read more)

www.gilbertgarcin.com