26 Feb 2013

Argos, Centre for Art and Media presents 'Bon Travail', Danny Matthys and New Acquisitions

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS AT ARGOS - ON VIEW FROM 03.03.2013 UNTIL 07.04.2013

'Bon Travail'


What is the view of artists with regard to the place of labour in our society? What place has labour in our lives? At the exhibition 'Bon Travail' ten artists and artist duos question the ostensive opposites 'labour' and 'non-labour' (or 'leisure').
With bittersweet humour they defend the right to laziness. Their apparently senseless, but playful actions illustrate the point that working can be totally absurd, or they show us how forced labour can be an instrument of power used to subject them.
In 'The Mirror of Production (or the Critical Illusion of the Historical Materialism)' Jean Baudrillard distances himself of Marx' and Marcuse's dialectical view of the active human being as the modeller or 'humanizer' of nature. He furthermore rejects the 'revolutionary discrepancy' between work and non-work, i.e. between work as 'quantity', presenting the absolute and materialist thesis, and non-work as 'quality', presenting the idealistic and non-bourgeois position. In Baudrillard's account of the 'ethic of labour' and 'aesthetic of play', play does neither dissociate itself from work, nor is it a form of recovery from work. Thus the author parts with the painful character of work and it's the negative connotations. In other words, in Baudrillard's view there is no strict distinction between 'work' and 'play'—he considers the two to be closely linked.
The exhibition presents contemporary artists who in their works illustrate the dialectic situation Baudrillard denounces and who above all raise more questions. From spectacular to intimate, the exhibition presents labour as a (political) performance. In this instance, 'non-labour' is considered of equal value, as an element of freedom that contributes to the quantity and the quality of both that which is produced by labour and life itself.
The idea for the project grew in October 2011 when the organizers of the performance festival 'Performatik' (Kaaitheater) and the French dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz and his Musée de la danse proposed to present a version of 'brouillon' at the premises of Argos 23 & 24.02.2013). 'brouillon' is quite literally an experimental project that explores how performers can 'activate' an exhibition.
'Bon Travail' presents a number of the works introduced in brouillon in a completely different context, namely in the 'fixed' scenography of an exhibition.
In the context of the exhibition, Argos also presents the debate 'Laziness: The Last Taboo' on 27 March. Philosophers Isabelle Stengers (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Petra Van Brabandt (Sint Lucas Antwerp) explore what our ambiguous position on laziness discloses with regard to the subject of work, pleasure, the contemporary production and consumption model and our being mortal.

With works by: Boris Chouvellon, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Pierre Leguillon, Gustav Metzger, Jean-Luc Moulène, Hans Op de Beeck, Jean-Gabriel Périot , Mladen Stilinović, Roberto Verde & Geraldine Py, Angel Vergara.
Curator : Ive Stevenheydens (Argos), in co-operation with Boris Charmatz and Martina Hochmuth (Musée de la danse).
Coproduction: Argos, Kaaitheater & Musée de la danse.




Danny Matthys - 'Fiction = Fixation'

In the exhibition Danny Matthys - 'Fiction = Fixation', Argos discloses a selection of video works produced by Danny Matthys (1947) between 1975 and 1985: these works are part of the Argos collection and have been recently digitized in collaboration with Packed - Centre of Expertise in Digital Heritage.
The oeuvre of Danny Matthys embraces different media. Since the end of 1960s, Matthys experiments in an analytical and conceptual way with Polaroids, paintings, photographs, assemblages, film and video installations. From the mid-1980s, he abandons videos and he mainly devotes, in collaboration with his partner, to painting.
'Fiction = Fixation' attempts to draft a movement within Matthys' oeuvre, but also critically explores the notion of photography in his video work. Starting from the visual tautology of 'Closed Letter & Number Series '(1975) - where a hand is dialling all the numbers on an telephone, from 0 to 9, and another pair of hands is typing all the letters of the alphabet on an old typewriter – till the theoretical dissertation of 'De la fiction en photographie' (1984), Danny Matthys investigates the media and blurs the boundaries between discourse and performance.
Although the ironic and playful allusions, his approach is systematic: in 'Internationale video manifestatie' (1977) and '2.(9+1) Polaroid Colour Pictures/Prints' (1976), Matthys takes Polaroid pictures of the framed settings and every few minutes a new the picture is stuck on the monitor until the monitor is completely covered: in this way, photographs and videos dialogue in a loop that stops when the TV-set is saturated.
'World Beauties' (1983-1984) reveals an endeavour to grasp meaningful elements of the world: four women - Eline stands for the turn of the century, Eveline for the 30ies, Monique for the 50ies and Jordan for the 70ies – symbolize the 20th Century and re-enact the tradition. These scenes are recorded on video, but also fixed on four large photographic assemblages.
On contrary, in 'De la fiction en photographie' – released at the occasion of the International Symposium about Photography in Venice, in 1984 – Matthys keeps literarily aside and lets the philosopher Paul Willemarck reading a theoretical text about photography. Matthys edits the recording of the reading with snapshots of the framing or photographs taken in Venice, while he points remarkable concepts by using inter-titles.
Matthys records traces of something that happened, he marks the differences within the repetitions of the gesture and, finally, 'Fiction = Fixation' could be understood as an example of what is called indexical art.
Curated by: Andrea Cinel



'Spring 2013 : New Acquisitions In The Black Box'

Along with the main exhibitions, Argos is delighted to present - on a weekly basis - recent acquisitions from the Argos collection. This selection highlights works released between 2009 and 2013 directed by Belgian and international artists. 
The program alternates individual titles and thematic screenings. In this way, Argos discloses recent video productions that, on the one hand, investigate current issues while, on the other hand, illustrate the different artist practices and approaches. 


Works by Jan Dietvorst & Roy Villevoye, Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, Pieter Geenen, Ken Kobland, Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott, Shelly Silver & Frances Richard, Krassimir Terziev and Jan Vromman.
Curated by: Andrea Cinel