Invited by Mu.ZEE to propose an exhibition and a publication based on the Museum’s collection, FormContent decided to focus its research on the inheritance left by the Flemish artist Guy Mees (1935 – 2003) and to present a selection of his oeuvre alongside artworks of João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Ian Kiaer and Gyan Panchal.
Guy Mees, Portraits, 1971-72. ©Guy Mees
One of the most striking elements in Guy Mees’ oeuvre is the absence of any critical discourse that could assist us in navigation of his work. Subtracting it from given artistic category, Mees purposely avoided any fixed reading of his practice. Although his importance has been recognised in Belgium since the early 1970’s, the artist’s reluctancy to align his aesthetics to an univocal interpretation, has generated a certain mystery around his work. If we cannot rely on any substantial writing on Guy Mees, how should we approach his legacy today? Is it possible and appropriate not to adopt an analytical approach, but rather focus on a synaesthetic attitude towards the works?
The Responsive Subject wishes to present the existence of parallel lines between our wanderings through Guy Mees’ oeuvre and the research on the complex and mysterious nature of representation in the work of João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Ian Kiaer and Gyan Panchal.
Mees treats the sculptural and pictorial surface as ‘peculiar and yet lived space’, he experiments with layers of found materials and offers alternative takes on display as much as Gusmao&Paiva, Kiaer and Panchal do through their formally related and yet conceptually independent practices.
In such a process of abstraction and consequent concretisation, Guy Mees’ example undermines the idea of artworks as texts awaiting precise exegeses. Panchal, Kiaer and Gusmão&Paiva seem to mirror Mees’ strategy: the works sprout from solitary and meditative research; they produce silence and generate reflection. All the artists play with ‘invisibility’, a constant mixture of genres and a problematised use of space. Any theory about their work seems unable to grasp a clear perimeter of influence and, facing them, our logical knowledge seems partial.
Panchal, Kiaer and Gusmão&Paiva’s relation to theory, research and visibility, create a thin red line that underlines the contemporary relevance of Guy Mees’ endowment.
The opacity of the different artistic practices presented in The Responsive Subject offers both a point of departure and a mysterious end point, a clue chased by FormContent and the artists in the show, then offered to each viewer’s sensitivity and intuition. Yet any decision over the works cannot be nothing else than a new representation of the same problematic, subjective speculations about what it might have been and what it has become now our perception of the puzzling nature of the art object.
Who is who
FormContent is a non-profit art space founded in 2007 by Francesco Pedraglio, Caterina Riva and Pieternel Vermoortel in London’s East End. Over the course of three years, the artistic programme has focused on exploring and challenging curatorial and artistic practices. FormContent’s extended field of activities includes publishing,curated projects and exhibitions for international art organisations. www.formcontent.org
CAHF – Contemporary Art Heritage Flanders
The exhibition The Responsive Subject is one of the four exhibitions, organised almost simultaneous, by the art platform CAHF, Contemporary Art Heritage Flanders, and made possible by the support of the Flemish Government.
Other CAHF exhibitions
M HKA, Antwerp – The Melancholy of Resistance – till 30.01.2011
Middelheim Museum, Antwerp – Crossing – 15.01 > 26.02.2011
SMAK, Ghent – Marcel – 26.03 > 5.06.2011
Keep already in mind…. 12 February 2011 – 11 am
Presentation of Lost Spaces by Guy Mees and launch of the publication The Responsive Subject in Mu.ZEE, Ostend
The art platform CAHF consists of four museums in Flanders: it is partnership between Mu.ZEE in Ostend, SMAK in Ghent, M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art and the Middelheim Museum, both located in Antwerp. This partnership promotes the Flanders Art Collection and contemporary art initiatives.
Mu.ZEE
Romestraat 11
B – 8400 Oostende
Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 6pm
Closed on Monday
Tickets
€ 7
€5 groups, 55+
€1 youngsters between 12 and 26 years old
Free entrance for children up till 12 years old
www.muzee.be – www.formcontent.org