Inaugural exhibition:
Jimmie Durham
Works of Science and Yellowness
10 October–7 December 2013
Opening: 10 October, 6–9pm
Galerie Michel Rein Brussels
51A Washington Street
B-1050 Brussels
T +32 (0)2 640 26 40
contact.brussels [at] michelrein.com
Galerie Michel Rein is inaugurating its Brussels space with an exhibition of Jimmie Durham, who we have been accompanying for more than ten years.
The choice of Brussels for the opening of a second space was motivated by longstanding friendships, close relationships with collectors, museum directors and artists but is also linked to the development over the past years of the Belgian art scene and more particularly that of Brussels’s. The gallery will have the pleasure to initially present its European and American artists and to offer the opportunity for Belgian artists to use its space.
The sculptures and drawings that Jimmie Durham offers us provoke in us a desire for dialogue(s). Dialogues with banal objects, which are common or even neglected but unconsciously carry a story and/or a political reality close to that of the artist, unperceived at the first glance.
In fact, the works of Jimmie Durham are indefinable, cannot be categorised and carry on a conversation about their identity, their story, their “life.” The artist invites the objects he has found, for example, on long walks with his family and to his studio, plays with them before sending them back into the world in a new way.
Jimmie Durham tells us, “I would like to make art each individual thing there is, there would not be a time when you had to decide to keep it or throw it away. It seems to me one can do that sort of non-dictatorial thing by making things which don’t have to do with craftwork at all just intellectually join our normal physical world.”
The past life of these objects remains firmly present while the artist suggests a new vision to us by their assembly, their “repainting” and their interrelation. In this way, the sculpture Yellow Higgs Transmitting Apparatus (2013), is made up of a piece of piping found in the street in Brussels in 1994, assembled, and placed on a wooden construction.
Hertz Receiving Apparatus (2013) is made up of a television satellite receiver repainted with “Chameleon” car paint. A piece of wood added and acting as a emitter/receiver fades little by little to let a wooden mast of human proportions appear, extending the invitation to the spectator to maintain a dialogue about post-industrial artifices.
A selection of drawings, some of which have been exhibited at the monographic retrospective exhibition of the artist at the MuHKA in Antwerp in 2012 (curated by Bart de Baere), complete the exhibition.
Jimmie Durham has notably exhibited at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels (1993) (curated by Dirk Snauwaert), Documenta IX and XIII in Kassel, Venice Biennial (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2013) and Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2009).
His works are included in numerous public collections such as MuHKA, Antwerp; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; SMAK, Ghent; Ludwig Museum, Köln; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Tate Modern, London…
A major artwork by Jimmie Durham, Labyrinth (2007), will be acquired on the occasion of the annual dinner of the Friends of the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris on October 22.
For more information, please contact Patrick Vanbellinghen, director.
Upcoming exhibitions in Paris:
LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Notion of Family (2002–present), 24 October–23 November
1st floor: Abigail Deville, Invisible Men: Beyond the Veil, 24 October–23 November
