 Palla Palla, 2004 mixed media sculpture, 150 x 90 x 70 cm Gert Verhoeven Cultura Incesto Gert Verhoeven (*1964) works with drawings, sculptures and videos. Rather than the results of a creative process they are his working tools. It is not as much the invention of forms or a style that matters to him but the exploration of the possibilities of the visual arts, determining the place(s) of art within the complex of social practices. The new works by Gert Verhoeven are created in the context of a commission for a public square on which he has been working for the last 12 months. For this commission, Verhoeven has proposed a "fountain", the pre-eminent cliché of how to "decorate" a plaza. His fountain, however, is not a masterpiece of artistry and engineering, a simply set piece designed to inspire wonder, or a symbol of the economic well-being of the city. On the contrary, it has become a complete hybrid that does not make the separation between the sculptural construction, the source of water, the urban setting and the presence of the onlooker. Verhoeven's fountain becomes one with the whole environment because the artist has drenched everything, from the jets of water, over the basin and the plaza to the benches, in the same anonymous pink colour. The result is one single component, but one doesn't know if it is a fountain, a sculpture or a plaza. For his exhibition at the gallery, Gert Verhoeven has approached the hybridisation of the fountain from a different angle by miniaturizing it and putting it into an artistic / domestic context. Two home fountains that will gurgle and sprout black and pink water sculptures further explore their status as works of art and their interference with the surrounding space. Carefully lighted by a set of spots and driven by a small computer, which regulates the intervals, the fountains are presented as stage sets on which bubbly water choreographies are performed. In addition to the sculptures, Gert Verhoeven is showing two new series of drawings: one based on the enlarged model sheet of a story board; the other one playing with different constellations of arrows. The storyboards are completely fictional and treat the recurrent themes in Verhoeven's work, like authorship, blobs, cultura incesto, etc... Exhibition: 28 April - 28 May 2005 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 12 - 6 pm Xavier Hufkens Gallery Sint-Jorisstraat 6-8 Rue Saint-Georges B-1050 Brussels Telephone +32 2 639 67 30 Fax +32 2 639 67 38 Email info@xavierhufkens.com www.xavierhufkens.com |
 |