photo: Adam Bogdam & Line Boogaerts
Meanwhile …… the city
Flemish Contemporary artworks and films
Video artworks, film screenings, photographic works, sound installations, 3D-Mapping, sculpture and much more in and around CCA Łaźnia 2
NUCLEO & CIRCA-Ciné Privé (B) in collaboration with Łaźnia (P)
Contemporary art and films created by Ghent-based artists will be on view in CCA Łaźnia 2 as part of Flanders Week 2015 (14th until 21st of March 2015).
The Ghent- and Gdańsk-based organisations NUCLEO, Circa and CCA Łaźnia, plus the artists and curators, have been working on a mutual concept for more than a year. As a result of a dialogue the audience will have an opportunity to see a mix of works created by Flemish artists-in-residence, film-makers and visual artists. The works presented have evolved around a fusion of sounds, interpretations, history and individual research. Outside the building a meeting point will be set up, with a programme of artistic interventions, screenings, a place to relax and meet up, also with the artists.
Chapters of the City, an exhibition by Lore Rabaut and Frank Depoorter
(19.03 - 12.04.2015)
Chapters of the City is a double exhibition of work by Lore Rabaut and Frank Depoorter. Both artists resided for ten days in Łaźnia. The city of Gdańsk and its spatiality is the common denominator for the exhibition, with each artist working on these topics on the basis of his own perspective and experience.
Lore Rabaut (b. 1983) exhibits both new and existing work, which is based on the relationship between urbanism, landscape and musicality. The cities of Gdańsk and Ghent are models for massive sculptures and drawings in which fragility, vibration and rhythm are characteristic elements. During her ten-day residency, Rabaut took a close look at the city and photographed several neighbourhoods from various heights. The horizon lines of Gdańsk form the basis for the development of musical sculptures and spatial scores.
Lore Rabaut enters into a dialogue with a Polish musician who will translate the works into music at the opening of the exhibition.
Media used: sculptures created in porcelain plaster, concrete, textile and wood, related to drawings done in pencil on paper.
The works of Frank Depoorter (b. 1968) are based on a predetermined walking route through the area around Gdańsk. The artist went on a 50 km walk, setting out from Osawa in the far west, crossing the city centre and ending in Swibno, which is located in the far eastern part of the region.
Depoorter has applied this method in various fields: the total physical perception of the walk is the basis for the work in which the speed of forward locomotion and perception in relation to memory play a central role. The action and the slowness of walking generate a specific perception that is not dominated by purely visual impressions.
The image is formed and coloured by the memory of the time, and the time that occurs between the action of walking and the creation of the image. The associative power of memory is charted, with the focus on the Gdańsk region.
Media used: Sculptures created in materials associated with the area, related to graphic images executed using the dry-point technique.
Lore Rabaut (b. 1983) and Frank Depoorter (b. 1968) live and work in Ghent. Rabaut has been a NUCLEO resident since 2007, Depoorter since 2004.
These two artists are working towards a common body of work in which the autonomy of each artist remains respected. Visual arts, architecture and applied art are the framework for their quest towards the meaning of “space and its properties”. The interaction between individual experience and public spheres is the recurring theme in their work. They work in a variety of media, including sculpture, installation, photography and drawing.
Works by Flemish artists on view in the building as well as in the public space:
Line Boogaerts
They almost missed it
(2015 - video, HDV, looped, color)
It was from Hotel Heweliusz (now Mercure) in Gdańsk that foreign journalists looked out at the strikes in the Lenin Shipyard in 1980. From this location they sent their information to the Western world. At that time, this hotel was a symbolic, capitalist island inside the communist system.
The window through which the journalists looked down was the barrier between inside and outside, like a boundary between two contrasting worlds: on the one hand the journalists and on the other the striking shipbuilders. Communication between them was difficult because information was often censored.
The window functioned as a screen: the representatives of the Western press were outsiders who watched the demonstrations. They were safely ensconced behind a glass wall in the hotel, while downstairs the shipbuilders were fighting for their rights. This revolution gave rise to a complete turnaround in Europe.
The window formed a border between two public spaces, a boundary between two realities, two systems. Line Boogaerts has created her own in-between world. She conjures up images based on testimonies and pictures that referred to the events of that time. These are images that the Belgian journalists almost missed because they were not aware of the importance of the upheaval.
Line Boogaerts (b. 1986) lives and works in Ghent and since 2013 has been in residence with NUCLEO. She resided at Łaźnia during 3 months.
Boogaerts creates video work based on monumental paintings and animation on windows. She uses windows as a canvas for her temporary paintings, windows as a barrier between inside and outside, between private and public. These are then converted into video images which show gaps and holes in reality in a surprising way. She takes pictures at different times of the day and in this way allows light and time to play a role in the work. She wipes away sections, adds new painted parts and creates animated scenes and actions. The drawings are a symbol of the obstacles to looking.
Wannes Goetschalckx
Running
(2014 - video)
Running is a triptic of screens. Three minimal settings are the same: a square glass box in the middle of the screen, half filled with water. The first video shows the water being circulated with a pump, fast and noisy and no one there. The second has a tube that slowly empties the glass tank in a bucket. Each time this last one is full, it will be poured into the tank and replaced by an empty one, a person coming in and out of frame once in a while. In the last video the water circulates with the least equipment, with a person constantly present, drinking…
Wannes Goetschalckx creates performative installations in which the limitations and possibilities of his own body, spatiality, handmade objects, play, humour and visual language all play an important part. He combines objects in sculptural settings, which he then occupies, probes and alters. He records these performance actions and also presents them as video works.
Goetschalckx explores the emotional and physical, and the ideological and imaginative in relation to the body and space. By imposing physical and mental challenges to his own mind and body, his work reveals how man’s own limitations weigh on human existence.
Wannes Goetschalckx (b. 1978) lives and works in Ghent and has been a NUCLEO resident since 2012.
Els Viaene
Timekabinet
Audio installation
(2015 - Magnets (listening tool), Electromagnets)
There is a time ball on the lighthouse in Nowy Port, Gdańsk. The first time ball in Nowy Port dates from 1876. Before the introduction of radio communication, time balls were an important optical signal by which sailors could calibrate their on-board chronometers and position their ships along the lines of longitude at sea. It is an ingenious system that works by means of electromagnets and time signals.
A long history precedes the arrival of the time ball. Time Cabinet is a sound installation that evokes other worlds, ancient times, the wide sea and journeys of exploration by means of a paper map and a spherical magnet.
Els Viaene (b. 1979) lives and works in Ghent and has been a NUCLEO resident since 2013. She stayed in Łaźnia for several weeks.
Viaene started her work as a sound artist / field recordist in 2001. With a set-up of two small microphones, she listens, zooms into and enlarges the aural landscapes surrounding us. The natural rhythms and textures of the sounds hidden in these landscapes form the basis of her work.
Working on these sound materials for performances, sound compositions or installations, she enables the listeners to travel in imaginary and organic environments.
Through the specific use and set-up of sound within a space, her installations create new spaces within existing ones, either emphasizing or making the physical borders of that space disappear. In so doing she often plays with the notions of seeing and hearing, the perception of what we see and hear and how they interfere with one another.
Sarah Westphal
Zwischendenräumen − Tussenderuimtes − Inbetweenspaces
Limited-edition picture book
(2007-09 - 26.5 x 20 cm, with fold-out pages)
Taking as its starting point images of the work Heimsuchen /The House (2007–08), the architectural picture book Zwischendenräumen − Tussenderuimtes − Inbetweenspaces is a photographically layered and folded labyrinth that suggests the feeling of rooms. By browsing through the book, the viewer moves from one room to another, and metaphorically touches the walls covered with old wallpaper. By unfolding pages, he opens doors as a ‘visitor’ to the different rooms that reveal themselves. In this way, the book becomes a mental space, a mental architecture in which stories can be experienced. A book can be read as a house, and a house can be read as a book.
Through an archaeological investigation, in Heimsuchen /The House (2007–08), the layers of the house’s history were revealed or, on the contrary, concealed, camouflaged and reconstructed by digging into walls, floors and ceilings. Layers of wallpaper had been scraped off, cut off and carved into. Surfaces were varnished or prepared with dust. Holes left by former fireplaces were stuffed with material; such elements as electrical sockets are replicated and reinstalled. Thick carpets were shaved and hair was felted into them. A cake was made, based on the decorative elements of the interior. Some of the more subtle interventions were only visible from a specific perspective, or became less visible the longer the visitor stayed in the space.
In addition, Westphal is creating a surprising site-specific installation in the Łaźnia space…
Sarah Westphal (G) (b.1981) lives and works in Ghent and has been a NUCLEO resident since 2011. She stayed in Łaźnia for several weeks.
In her multidisciplinary work, Westphal explores the relationships between people, objects and their surroundings. A key part of this investigation focuses on how qualities of place and architecture contribute to our human experience, answering such questions as how a location influences us physically and psychologically. How do we perceive the world around us? How does a space refer to its former inhabitants? What does an object tell us about its users? What impressions are left and what stories can be read from the layered history of surfaces and imprints or the corporeality of space?
In a kind of archaeological research, Westphal reveals, camouflages and reconstructs missing links. Through these minimal and meticulous actions, she manipulates the essence of the found situation and constructs sober but complex site-specific installations that can be physically experienced by the viewer. Sculptures, photographs and projections shift between two- and three-dimensionality, between reality and fiction.
tBedrijf
The Distillery (Gregg Young)
Reinout Hiel
Aïlien Reyns
and more
Film Repertoire:
Selection of best films by Ciné Privé Festival: Flemish fiction, documentary, short films and animation. For more information about the programme of Ciné Privé: click here.
Best short films by Munk Studio, selection of films nominated for the Grand Prix of the 7th Short Waves Festival.
Venue
CCA Łaźnia; Strajku Dokerów 5
Gdańsk Nowy Port
thanks to
Bart Doucet, City of Ghent, City of Gdansk, Łaźnia, Ghent Harbour, SMart, Thibaut Verhoeven, all the artists, De Centrale,…
