Exhibition
The exhibition took place from 17 June to 4 September 2016.
From 17 June to 4 September 2016, the BOZAR-Center for Fine Arts in Brussels showed the exhibition open spaces | secret places. Works from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Vienna.
The exhibition open spaces | secret places. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION combines over 200 works by 27 artists. This rarely shown focal point of the collection deals with the perception of spaces and places, and is being presented this summer in Brussels. Thus the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (BOZAR), is presenting works of the VERBUND COLLECTION for the second time, after the Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s in 2014. This exhibition of works by well-known and lesser-known artists is also the main exhibition of the Summer of Photography in Brussels 2016.
Curator:
Curated by Gabriele Schor, founding director of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna, and Sophie Lauwers, artistic director of the BOZAR, Brussels
Exhibition Team
Nicolas Bernus, technical director, BOZAR. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Leen Daems, press spokesperson, BOZAR. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Theresa Dann, curatorial assistant of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Daniela Hahn, curatorial assistant of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Christel Tsilibaris, curatorial project manager, BOZAR. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Gunther de Wit, publications coordinator at the BOZAR. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Vito Acconci | Francis Alÿs | Eleanor Antin | Bernd und Hilla Becher | Barbara Bloom | Tom Burr | Janet Cardiff / George Bures Miller | Ceal Floyer | Simryn Gill | Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler | Joachim Koester | Louise Lawler | Gordon Matta-Clark | Ursula Mayer | Anthony McCall | Tahmineh Monzavi | Ernesto Neto | Sener Özmen / Erkan Özgen | Fred Sandback | Jeff Wall | James Welling | David Wojnarowicz | Nil Yalter
The exhibition took place from 17 June to 4 September 2016.
Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: BOZAR Bookshop
Edition: 2016
Language: English
Since ancient times, people have been attempting to discuss the phenomenon of space in either cosmological, poetic or socio-cultural terms. In the Early Renaissance, the discovery of perspective led to the knowledge of being able to depict spatial depth in painting. In the visual arts, a collective awareness for spatial thinking developed from the 1960s onwards. Artists increasingly abandoned the two-dimensional surface, which went hand-in-hand with the loss of the supremacy of painting, and left the conventional place of production and presentation, their studios and the museums. The result is extensive environments, giant sculptural formations in the expanse of the landscape (land art) and interventions in the urban space. Recent decades illustrate that the present practice of art would be inconceivable without the earlier radical shift. The increasing spatialisation of art goes hand-in-hand with our practice of life, which has undergone dramatic social and cultural change through new spatial circumstances (virtual space, greater mobility). Precisely because of this fluctuating presence, we seem all the more keenly aware of our location. We used to ask on the phone, “How are you?”, today we ask, “Where are you?”. Against this background, the exhibition open spaces | secret places brings together works from 1970 to today from the VERBUND COLLECTION that divide the perception of space and place in different ways.
The exhibition is arranged into four areas: ‘Historical places’, ‘Psychological places’, ‘Spaces of the in-between’, ‘Creating space’. Eleanor Antin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Tom Burr, Joachim Koester, James Welling and Nil Yalter document places that no longer exist in this form. In this way they link transience and memory. Barbara Bloom, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Ursula Mayer, Ernesto Neto and Markus Schinwald create a psychological space, a space that confronts us with our inner being and explores our personal longings and fears. The works by Vito Acconci, Simryn Gill, Louise Lawler, Tahmineh Monzavi, Sener Özmen and Erkan Özgen tell stories of the in-between. Places that bear witness to the absence of people, deconstructions of the aura and the departure from institutional spaces. Gordon Matta-Clark, Anthony McCall, Fred Sandback create place-specific interventions and create space by breaking it up, accentuating it or creating it from ephemeral materials such as light and mist.
Photos: © Philippe de Gobert / BOZAR, Brussels