Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Art Brussels and Antwerp Zoo

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Visited Art Brussels with AA a couple of weeks ago. Existentialist statements presented in forms familiar from popular consumer culture challenged the viewer with subtle dissonance and mild disjuncture between form and content that seemed to be echoed throughout by both the venue and format of Art Brussels itself in what appeared packaged and marketed as a large industrial trade show of galleries in what is essentially a warehouse or hangar size environment dedicated to the network of global consumerism sponsored by a medley of brands and corporate finance. I suppose the church and feudalism sponsored the art of the middle ages in a comparable if  somewhat different cosmos 600 years ago.   

There was a plethora of clever visual conceits and double ironies.  Oslo Contemporary had a display of statistical charts that appeared to suggest, perhaps not absurdly or ironically given contemporary educational practice in some quarters, that there could be measurable data for the following categories: Secrets and Hidden Structures in History, Greed and Desire in Genetics, Hope and Reality in Political Science, Feminism in Theory, and Chance, Faith and Destiny in Astrophysics and Space Science.  





I found myself aestheticising the banal and ordinary in much the same way that several of the 'works of art' seemed to be doing in a playful and engaging manner..........

Work of art 

Floor of Art Brussels 

Work of art 


White box conspicuously 'hiding' electronics 

Gallery chair with ubiquitous laptop 

On earlier trip to Antwerp Zoo with A I captured an image of this strange creature behind the glass in the reptile house - its a great place to observe people, especially if you are an animal.













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