Les collections

Manuela Klerkx

Finally time for video art: 6 tips

Although video art is now a widespread phenomenon, it is not yet a hit with galleries offering this art form. Video art now includes traditional - analogue - film and digital video, as well as video games, phone apps, virtual reality, etc. What is striking is that prominent cultural events such as the Venice Biennale or the Documenta in Kassel often show a lot of video art. Among the artists nominated for the important Turner Prize are often video artists. For example, all 8 artists shortlisted for the 2018 and 2019 Turner Prize 2018 and 2019 produce video art. Due to improvements in technology and a growing interest on the part of curators and museums in the medium, the collection of time-based media - which includes sound and performance art - has grown significantly both institutionally and privately since the 1970s. Still, the market for video and virtual reality media is lagging behind that of more traditional media such as painting and sculpture, but it is improving. Large sums are now being paid for work by video artists such as Nam June Paik, Stan Douglas, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Tony Oursler, Cyprien Gaillard, Shirin Neshat, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Sharon Lockhart, Steve McQueen, Jesper Just, Cao Fei and Xu Zhen. The Asian art market in particular shows a growing number of - especially - young art buyers interested in video art in the broadest sense of the word. Advanced digital technologies that make it possible to create virtual 3D spaces, video screens that run across and past each other and projections on the inner and outer walls of large buildings challenge artists to experiment and expand their visual language with virtual interventions and projections.

For this Collection I immerse myself in the - relatively unknown - world of video. And for 2021, I intend to devote more time for time-based media: projecting it or just watching it on my laptop and give myself the time to dive into the virtual world of video art.

Sarah & Charles

2 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 12 Oeuvres disponibles

2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Sarah & Charles (1981, 1979, Brussels) is an artist duo that has been working on themes such as reality and fiction in relation to the public domain for over ten years. In doing so, they zoom in on the role of virtual reality and AI with regard to our personal emotions and relationship to other individuals and society as a whole. In the digital animation video In the Hands of Puppets, we see a particularly lively virtual hand puppet in dialogue with artists and people with psychoses about their feelings and social relationships. The video was selected for the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam and outlines how we can share our intimate feelings in a virtual world. It sheds light on a possible future in which AI will have a "human" face. Here, too, the central theme is the boundary between fiction and reality: the hand puppet listens to the interviewees' stories while he himself seems to be succumbing to his own emotions. The vertical shoot is based on that of a telephone screen, the place where most of our communication takes place.

(Gallery: CINNNAMON)

Hamza Halloubi

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 3 Oeuvres disponibles

3 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Through the image of the narrator's mouth, we are taken by the hand, as it were, by the voice of a French-speaking woman who - translated into English - says: “I am in the museum and I wonder what it means to be here! I never asked myself this important question before. What does it mean to find oneself in a museum with a heritage that doesn't belong to you?”. A moment later she wonders if she can be there in that museum and questions whether she can ignore the narrative she finds herself surrounded by. From a museum in London, a woman of African descent reports to a friend about what she does with her background there, what meaning it has: She talks about subjects such as identity, class and artistic heritage, and she questions the position of a non-Western viewer in relation to modern Western art, which claims universality, but simultaneously excludes other stories. It’s interesting to find yourself strolling through a museum with a woman while we barely see any art at all. Instead of looking at art, we listen to her voice and experience the art and the museum through her eyes and reflections.

(Gallery: tegenboschvanvreden)

Maria Friberg

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 29 Oeuvres disponibles

0 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

For the Matador video, the well-known Swedish artist Maria Friberg (1966) had a vortex machine built consisting of wood, metal and glass to film the special light effects. The title "Matador" refers to the power of the pumps that were placed in the machine to ensure that the different garments slowly and in a circular motion descend to the bottom as in a mating dance. Just as a matador challenges the bull with a rag, in a life-and-death struggle, the vortex machine - which represents life - does so in a symbolic way. Maria Friberg about this video:
‘The idea was to create imagery of a man’s shirt, trousers and a jacket twirling around getting pulled down by the vortex. For it to call to mind a movement of life and the inevitability of ultimately disappearing. When I look at the work now it appears to bear a lot of spark of life and force; more so than death. The life line; the vortex symbolizing it here, appears thin and delicate but surprisingly resilient. It breaks through in the end, followed by a serene peace which finds itself as two white shirts intertwine in a dance of sort. The video is marked by a silence.’ A poetic work in which the power of water and light, nature and technology, life and death, come together in silence.

(Gallery: LMNO)

Best of Graduates 2019

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 25 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Commenting on his graduation project at the KABK in The Hague, the young Russian photographer Alex Avgud (1986) says: ‘My graduation project ‘Exercises in Freedom’ originated in parallels I’ve noticed in what I’ve felt in the past as a gay teenager in Eastern Europe, and in the present—as a migrant adult in the West. To visualize the idea that any society wants to grind down the misfits, I’ve worked with people sharing experiences similar to mine, until boundaries between our individual and collective emotions disappeared.
Themes such as sexuality and oppression are central to his work in which he examines his own struggle and compares it with migrants and gays who, like him, suffer from their "forbidden" love. In "Exercises of Freedom" he shows his transformation from a gay teenager living in a country where homosexuality is officially prohibited to an adult young man in the Netherlands. We see how he struggles free from old, imposed norms and values and finds openings to a new life in which love and freedom can go hand in hand.

(Gallery: Galerie Ron Mandos)

Miriam Kruishoop

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 4 Oeuvres disponibles

0 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

The work of Dutch-American artist and filmmaker Miriam Kruishoop focuses on "invisible" people in society who suffer most from oppression and discrimination. Her 10-year stay in the US has allowed her to see up close what racial hatred, oppression of minorities, police brutality, and the like mean. "Living in America" is about the meaning of "being black" in the US through the story of Niaya Jones, an 18-year-old African-American girl from Nickerson Gardens, Watts. Nickerson Gardens is one of the most impoverished and problematic area in downtown/south Los Angeles. Niaya Jones (aka BOSSLADY) is a well-known 'krumping' dancer from that district. Miriam and Niaya developed a choreography in which Niaya explains what it means to grow up as a Gen Z teen in the hood. Through dance, Niaya expresses pain she felt when her best friend was shot by the police, just behind her house:‘Each movement captures the sadness that she has felt through many hardships, including not being able to meet her father who has been incarcerated most of her life (his first trial hearing is in 2032).’ (bron:www.theaterrotterdam.nl/agenda/8455/Miriam_Kruishoop/LIVING_IN_AMERICA_/)

(Gallery: NL = US Art)

Ruben Bellinkx

1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 5 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 2 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Statis means standstill, equilibrium, but also a state of stability due to forces or chemical processes (e.g. metabolism) that cancel each other out. In "Stasis", a 2013 film by Ruben Bellinkx (1975), we see a number of men interacting with a table. The result is a tower of 34 men, carrying a table in their mouths in four groups and on four different levels. Although it is clear that the gentlemen cannot talk or eat together, there is a dialogue nevertheless: the presence and participation of each individual is essential to maintain the balance / construction. Where does the object end and the subject's physical conditions begin?

(Gallery: Geukens & De Vil)