On the 29th of October from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. the Baukunst Galerie opens a major solo-exhibition with a monumental video projection of the Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck. The film “Staging Silence” is presented in the context of the KunstFilmBiennale and will be shown at the gallery until the 27th of November 2009. Furthermore there will be a screening of the film “Extensions” within the international competition of the KunstFilmBiennale at the Black Box of the Cinedom on Friday, the 30st of October at 9 p.m.
The exhibition at the Baukunst Galerie is the German premiere of “Staging Silence”. Its score was specially composed for the film by the musician Serge Lacroix, inspired by the images themselves. In addition to the 22 minutes lasting video loop an accompanying artist edition was created. It supplements the installation by a photo of the set of “Staging Silence” in the form of a black-and-white lambda exposure on dibond (102 cm x 73 cm) and thereby delivers an insight into the working process of the artist.
Hans Op de Beeck was born in 1969 in Turnhout, Belgium and lives and works in Brussels. In his œuvre he uses a very wide variety of media – he paints, draws, takes pictures, shoots films, produces sculptures and monumental installations, writes short stories and designs stage settings. It is his quest for the most effective way of presenting the concrete contents of each work that determines his selection of the medium. As a locum of the spectator he searches for situations, which invite to identification. In his parallel worlds he creates fictional places, moments and characters, hoping that the spectator takes them for real for a moment. Therefore he works with effects of trompe-l’œil undermining them by alienating elements as the overreached shifting of proportions. In his play with illusions he questions the complex relation between reality and representation, between what we see and what we want to believe in order to make it easier to deal with our own deficiency. His suggestive, visual proposals produce disquieting, melancholic, ambivalent images in our mind and thereby capture the tragicomic absurdity of our postmodern existence.
After his studies at the Rijksakademie the artist received the Prix Jeune Peinture Belge in 2001. From 2002 to 2003 he succeeded with a residence scholarship at the MoMA and the P.S.1 in New York. Moreover he was awarded the Eugène Baie Award in 2006 and the Catholic University of Leuven Culture Prize in 2009. His works were already exhibited at major international museums as the Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Arizona), the ZKM (Karlsruhe), the Kunstverein Hannover, the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), the S.M.A.K. (Ghent) and the P.S.1 (New York). Beside several monumental installations at the “Art Unlimited” space of the Art Basel from 2004 to 2009 his works were also presented at the Shanghai Biennale 2006 and the Singapore Biennale 2008.
“Staging Silence”, 2009
22 min loop, 16:9, black/white, Full HD video, transferred to Blu-Ray Disk, edition of 10 (+2AP)
“’Staging Silence’ is based around remembered spaces; not any specific sites, but the abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in my memory as the common denominator of the many similar public places I have visited and experienced. The video images themselves are both ridiculous and serious, just like the eclectic mix of pictures in our minds. The decision to film in black-and-white heightens this ambiguity: the amateurish quality of the video invokes the legacy of slapstick, as well as the insidious suspense and latent derailment of film noir. But perhaps gravity and menace ultimately prevail. The title, “staging silence”, refers to the staging of such dormant decors where, in the absence of people, the spectator can project himself as the lone protagonist, unhindered by others.
Memory images are disproportionate mixtures of concrete information and fantasies, and in this film they materialize before the spectator’s eyes through anonymous tinkering and improvising hands. Arms, like those of faceless puppeteers, appear and disappear at random, manipulating banal objects, scale representations and artificial lighting into alienating yet recognizable locations. These places are no more or less than animated decors for possible stories, evocative visual propositions to the spectator.“
Click here for link to video
