MONDO CANE
by Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Prefiguration programme, Belgian Pavilion, 58th edition of the Venice Biennale
Saturday, January 26, 2019, 8pm
A newly commissioned organ concert will be performed as a preamble to MONDO CANE, a project by artist duo Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys selected to represent Belgium at the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale, and curated by La Loge director Anne-Claire Schmitz. Composed by Erik Thys, the concert will adopt the form of an international anthem, a musical composition of celebration communicating the universal values, traditions, and struggles of a people not bound to any specific nation.
La Loge is institutional partner of the Belgian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale.
MONDO CANE is commissioned by Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
Jos de Gruyter (b. 1965) and Harald Thys (b. 1966) live in Brussels and have been working together since the late 1980s. The artist duo creates films, drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures in which simultaneously hyper-recognizable and non-authoritarian characters, objects and spaces exist. De Gruyter and Thys have had numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including Konkurs Eksperten at Kunsthal Aarhus (2018); White Suprematism at Portikus Frankfurt and CAC Vilnius (2016); Im Reich der Sonnenfinsternis at MCA Chicago; Fine Arts at MOMA PS1, Die schmutzigne Puppen von Pommern at The Power Station Dallas and Tram 3 ay CCA Wattis (2015); Das Wunder des Lebens at at Kunsthalle Wien (2014) and Optimundus at M HKA Antwerp (2013). The artists were included in the Venice Biennale (2013) and the Berlin Bienniale (2008).
Multiverse
by Michel Blazy
exhibition
February 15–March 10, 2019
Opening: Thursday, February 14, 2019, 6-9pm
The passage of time over matter is central to Michel Blazy’s practice. Since the early nineties, the artist has been working with living entities, both artificial and natural, which are all equally subject to the supremacy of time and the multitude of triggers that impact the environment.
In Multiverse, La Loge reveals its potential as an animated place where materials can grow, germinate, transform and deteriorate. Each room of the building provides specific spatial, lighting and climatological conditions, accommodating different types of life to coexist. The exhibition comprises key elements from Blazy’s studio practice including film, sculpture and installation, often composed of impermanent, transient materials like plants, molds, nutritional ingredients and everyday objects.
Throughout the course of the exhibition, the works develop independently from each other and beyond the control of the artist. In this untended multiverse, where things can freely overflow, the eccentric movement of matter lurks as a constant possibility.
Michel Blazy (b.1966) lives and works in Paris. Solo exhibitions comprise Last Garden, Le Voyage à Nantes, Nantes/FR, 2018; Pull Over Time, Art : Concept, 2015; Bouquet Final 3, National Gallery of Victoria; Melbourne White Night, 2013; Le Grand Restaurant, Frac Île-de-France, Paris, 2012; Débordement domestique, Art : Concept, Paris, 2012; Post Patman, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2007. n 2008 he was nominated for the 2008 Marcel Duchamp Prize, and his work has been collected by numerous public collections including The National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou; the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Tasmania; the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris; the New Museum of Monaco; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse and several regional funds for contemporary art.
Despina
by Zoë Paul
exhibition
April 25–June 29, 2019
Opening: Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 6-9pm
Extended opening hours during Art Brussels: Thursday, April 25 – Saturday, April 27, 2019 (closed on Sunday), 11 to 7pm
La Loge invites Zoë Paul to realise her first institutional solo exhibition outside of the UK. Paul’s work consists of elements and motifs that—whether at a domestic or community scale—convey an essence of belonging. She employs timeless, general-purpose, low-tech materials and techniques, such as clay, weaving and drawing, that pertain to a small-scale economy and are used to meet daily life needs. Her work aims to examine our relationship with tradition and explores shifts in perception around the value of an object according to time and context.
At La Loge, Paul unites new works and material experiments exploring the impermanence of life through the lens of ancient mythologies, fertility, femininity and reproduction. The multiple facets of Despina—the Lady mistress of the house, a goddess of nature, birth and death, an underground deity—occupy the different spaces of La Loge. Constructed as a narrative depicting multiple scenes above and below the earth’s surface, Paul’s cinematic images suggest a more holistic approach to the landscape. The exhibition underlines the co-dependency between the divine and obscure underworld and the territory of domestic life.
Zoë Paul (b.1987, London) grew up between the Greek island of Kithira and Oxford, having South African origins. She now lives and works in Athens. After finishing her undergraduate at Camberwell College of art, she completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Past projects and exhibitions include La Perma-Perla Kraal Emporium, a collaborative work that invites visitors to sit around a long table and make clay beads, SPIKE Island, Bristol, 2018 and The Breeder, Athens, 2017; Equilibrists organized by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation, Athens in collaboration at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Solitude and Village, an exhibition exploring social relations and indebtedness in the village, The Breeder, Athens (2016), and Unorthodox at the Jewish Museum, New York, 2015.
