Adrian Ghenie, Jonathan Meese and Rinus Van de Velde: KUNST KUNST KUNST

Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to present KUNST KUNST KUNST, a group exhibition with Adrian Ghenie, Jonathan Meese and Rinus Van de Velde.

This exhibition inaugurates the new space of the gallery, which was designed by architects OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen. OFFICE is known for its quirky architecture, in which realizations and theoretical projects stand side by side. Their assignment was simple: to create a building in function of art. As a series of rooms, the building ‘shows’ its structure, its silhouette. This is immediately noticeable both on the outside and inside: in the middle of Nieuw Zuid there is a building that gives space to contemporary art. A storage space, offices, a white cube, a chapel and a patio follow each other, as pure building types where art is experienced in different ways. The building makes a statement for both its immediate surroundings and inside; art is central and is immediately visible and accessible to everyone in the city.

At first sight Adrian Ghenie’s (1977, Baia-Mare; lives and works in Cluj and Berlin) paintings deal with subjects that carry a historical set of references, but collective memory is constantly challenged by enigmatic prophetic actions, occulted and personal folds in the temporal linearity. Ghenie’s works have become increasingly complex and multilayered, generating an open-ended set of internal and external meanings. Infused with ambiguity, the works operate in the areas between figuration and abstraction, history and imagination, past and present.

Jonathan Meese (1970, Tokyo; lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg) is renowned for his multi-faceted work, including wildly exuberant paintings and installations, ecstatic performances, and a powerful body of sculptures. All of Meese’s work is driven and supported by a striving for a rule of art, the dictatorship of art. Apparently effortlessly, he has developed in all genres an independent and at the same time unique vocabulary that gives his work a variety, visual energy and quality which, according to Robert Fleck, has been unheard of since Picasso. Meese describes the new space of Tim Van Laere Gallery as the MOBY DICK BUNKER of ART. For KUNST KUNST KUNST, Meese presents a series of new works on the theme of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick alongside large-scale bronze sculptures.

Rinus Van de Velde (1983, Leuven, lives and works in Antwerp) is mainly known for his large-scale charcoal drawings. Although these drawings still play a prominent role in his work, Van de Velde is increasingly evolving towards a ‘total artist’, creating a tension between fiction and reality through the use of different media such as drawings, sculptures, installations and film. With his drawings, Van de Velde invites the spectator to step into his carefully constructed universe. While he casts himself as a succession of fictional characters and constantly reinvents himself as a different kind of artist, Van de Velde lives in different personas, genres and art forms. In KUNST KUNST KUNST, Van de Velde presents a new series of drawings in color, new sculptures in ceramics, prop sculptures and large-scale charcoal drawings.