Jonathan Paepens & Rudy Van Moorleghem in 'Girls & Ponies'

fri 12.06 - sun 23.08.2015

Nieuwe Vide Art Space
Minckelersweg 6
2031 EM Harlem

Opening: Friday 12 June, 7 pm

Performance: Diva John & Tina Sabrina Joyce, 8.30 pm

Participating artists:
All The Cunning Stunts | James Gregory Atkinson & Helen Demisch | Sebastian De Line | Olivia Dunbar | Jonathan Paepens & Rudy van Moorleghem (aka Diva John & Tina Sabrina Joyce).

 

On 12 June, Nieuwe Vide opens Girls & Ponies, a group exhibition dealing with identity presets and a modest attempt to break away from identity constructs as fixed by language and representation. The starting point of the exhibition is the pairing of the words 'Girls&Ponies', a phrase which harbors such an obvious intrinsic logic it merely seems to present a harmless social given. Through the work of the five artists and collectives Girls & Ponies navigates gestures, language and symbols that are generally embraced as identity indicators, undermining or reinforcing these in order to subvert our preconceptions.

Although the origins of the show leans on the discussion around unnecessary and unwanted genderisation of products, past-times and professions, the exhibition itself does not seek a continuation of the binary, and rather boring, debate that takes shape in contrasts such as trending topics like :#YesAllWomen or #Idontneedfeminism. The exhibition is indebted to queer strategies, but specifically does not set these within a discourse of sexual orientation, rather it looks at the potential of queering to escape narrowing gender expectations, and offer kaleidoscopic and fluid identity options. The exhibition seeks for inclusiveness and questions the boundaries of definitions, it asks 'Can we find infinity, in the apparently finite?'

Jonathan Paepens & Rudy van Moorleghem break out in their alterego's Diva John & Tina Sabrina in 45 minute long transcendental rave, appropriating and distorting the broad range of masculine/feminine gestures that shape our music video consumption. All The Cunning Stunts take the space of Nieuwe Vide as a décor meets mood board that acts as a casting set in order to find the heroine for a yet to be produced video work, a dispersed character, not fractured but free. Sebastian De Line presents a recent body of work that entails a new language and self-invented script, attempting to go beyond the unconscious political implications that have become inscribed in our daily idiom. Where Olivia Dunbar deals with notions of naming and representation by appropriating a quasi-scientific tone in new body of work including sculpture, painting, video and writing. Finally Helen Demisch & James Gregory Atkinson allude to the current day obsession with transparency of the self, adapted from a recent piece presented at Goethe Institut New York.

Girls & Ponies is the last exhibition curated by Nathalie Hartjes under her tenure as artistic director at Nieuwe Vide.


Public program
13 June, a one day symposium 'The muse, powerful totem or harmless object?', kindly hosted by the Frans Hals museum Read more here.
11 July, a workshop with Sander Reijgers 'Guys & Dolls'
15,22,29 July & 5 August, satellite screenings of Jonathan Paepens & Rudy van Moorleghem 'F.A.M.E. I wanna live 4-evahhh.' at Parksessies festival
23 August, Finnisage & performance by Olivia Dunbar