BRUSSELS.- Rodolphe Janssen gallery announce their new exhibition entitled Balls & Glory.
Following visits of fifty-some artists studios in Belgium, the gallery presents works by nine very diverse and emerging artists. The title of the exhibition not only refers to the eponymous restaurant in Ghent where the idea was born during a lunch meeting in between studio visits. It also underlines the ambition of these nine artists as well as the purpose of the show, to put a spotlight on talented artists who haven’t yet had many opportunities to showcase their works.
The aim of the exhibition is not to give an overview of the Belgian art scene; it is rather the result of ‘fieldwork’ in the art scene and a reflection of those things that caught the gallery's attention. One artist told them about another, and curators, journalists and collectors, at their turn, introduced them to new artists. Visiting artist studios is a crucial part of the activity of every galerist, and for this exhibition they had the opportunity and the luck to discover a great many.
After having organized a dozen exhibitions with young American artists at the gallery, many also in collaboration with the New York based Still House Group, this show highlights a part of the young Belgian art scene. Nine artists with different backgrounds, each in their way, breathe new life into this artistic landscape.
Artists
Sarah Caillard’s sculptures are created through molding and modeling, they are made of paraffin, alginate or pigments as well as materials related to the world of construction such as plaster or concrete. Her sculptures show their strength and fragility, taking the form of bodies that are both sensual and organic.
Etienne Courtois finds inspiration in the nature of our relation to the image and its fracture prompted by the advent of digital photography. His works balance on the border between photography and painting, sometimes with a literal overlap between both.
Kasper De Vos’ works consist essentially of sculptures and installations often realised with found materials. He then exploits the shapes and textures of these materials, using them to create parodies of themselves, imitations that accentuate the paradox between the envisaged world and physical reality as it appears.
Douglas Eynon works with sculpture and drawings that are usually combined to form installations. His work is often site specific. Sculptures appear in the backgrounds of drawings, creating an imaginary landscape where certain themes and characters appear again and again.
Julien Goniche’s images are not delimited. His photographs, that often remind us of snapshots, find themselves on the fragile border between the virtual and the actual - two coexisting phases of the real. They show us simultaneously the two sharp edges of modern life: what is there, and is offered to us, versus what is it’s fantasized use.
Liesbeth Henderickx’ sculptures consist of incrementally assembled rounded shapes. These two-dimensional basic shapes, that are transformed and stacked, are the starting point of her search to introduce space, light, and movement into her sculptures.
Painting and drawing have been Alejandra Hernández’s principal mediums influenced by the experiences of daily life, music, art history, cinema and mythology among others. The result is often a combination of images and symbols that play between reality and fantasy, portrayed in moments where ambiguity is always present.
Sanam Khatibi’s works deal with the thin line that exists between fear and desire. Her paintings often question the precarious nature of human interaction, animality, excess and the loss of control. Her subjects are caught in a duality of power and failure, splendour and fragility and are often set in exotic-looking landscapes.
Drawing is at the core of Klaas Vanhee’s artistic practice. From within the drawing, images, sentences, thoughts, video work, paintings, sculptures and even guitars arise, often dealing with the power, definition and meaning of drawing itself.
