The exhibition The future = Beurssc50uwburg brings together familiar faces from our fifty-year past with (young) artists working with the building or its history.
Vernissage 5 Feb 2015 19:00
© Wim-Wauman Vitus 2014 Archival-pigment-print 35x27,5-cm Courtesy Roberto Polo Gallery
A short walk immediately spells it out for you: this is a playhouse – with a theatre hall, wide hallways, hollow staircases, a labyrinth of emergency exits – and not a typical exhibition space, nor a museum, a gallery, white cube or black box. Even so, over the past fifty years, people have felt the urge to show visual and video art and to search for a way to display their work within the extraordinary walls of Beursschouwburg.
We refer to our exhibition history by (re)displaying the works of AMVK, Walter Swennen, Els Opsomer, Paul Gees, Lisa De Boeck and Marilène Coolens in collaboration with Jan Decorte and Sigrid Vinks. Some of us will recognise these works as ‘remakes’, with a small addition, change, different perspective here and there.
A second part guides you along works of art that have entered our building in different ways and on different moments. In 1986, it was decided that for every building subsidized by the Flemish Government, one percent of building costs had to be spent on integrated art. On the occasion of the renovation of Beursschouwburg in 2002, Swiss exhibition maker Moritz Küng was selected with his project: he eternalized the sound installations of Ann-Veronica Janssen and Christophe Fink. The textual work of Dora Garcia meandered through our brochure for an entire season. These in situ-works have been complemented throughout the years. On the occasion of festivals or projects, Rinus Vandevelde, David Helbich and Lawrence Weiner were asked to intervene in and around the building. Next to looking back there’s also looking forward. Wim Wauman, Karen Vermeren, Floris Vanhoof and Lieven Segers were assigned a new creation. A still life with found Beursschouwburg materials that refer to architecture, a reference to the colourful stained-glass window that once decorated the white foyer, a video wall that shows a selection of old Beursschouwburg productions, and bread sacks scribbled with playful aphorisms; in a nutshell, this is what you can expect from these novelties.
In short: The future = Beurssc50uwburg deals with what was, what is and what will be.
