Scènes dans une bulle de crystal — Seen in a cristal ball

“Bosch’s depiction of the pleasures of the world […] is first of all an invitation to the viewer to restore man’s original, pre-lapsarian capacity of ‘speculative’ vision, that is to say, to clear the mind and see through the delusional world of evil-induced phantasms.” (1)

To start the new year with some reflexions on an ideal world, Galerie Chantal Crousel is pleased to present Scènes dans une bulle de cristal — Seen in a crystal ball, an exhibition that invites the visitor to explore works offering some suggestions on how to transcend the universe we are part of.

Fluids and moments or trajectories frozen into solid glass, turbulences, contribute to a present or future and drive them in its most complex form, whether it is through the wandering of a drop of water, the metaphysical phenomenons and human insight, or merely through the use of a black box and crystallisation to cease an eternal present.

Introducing new dimensions to the visitor, an environment predicting paths of hurricanes (Haegue Yang), a contemplative sound installation (Tomoko Sauvage), an ancient rosewater distillery by Rirkrit Tiravanija, and the transcendental globes (Melik Ohanian). These works will stage parallel and converging universes.

Abraham Cruzvillegas, David Douard and Liliane Lijn’s works encourage us to think outside the box, to reflect on reality and explore it. José María Sicilia, Anri Sala, Jean-Luc Moulène and Willem de Rooij bend the usually discouraging rules and provides them with new lives.

Illusion is part of the path leading to free one’s mind. Mona Hatoum and Hassan Khan’s sculptures present a cristallisation of the instant, perfect and vulnerable. In The crystalist manifesto signed by painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, perception of time and space must remain unbounded.(2)

There is no ordinary experience. Not either in the snapshots of the enigmatic photographs by Hassan Khan, Gabriel Orozco and Wolfgang Tillmans.

This exhibition will focus on interior and exterior representation of the world, dealing with the speculum of humanity’s infernal journey, as portrayed in Jérôme Bosch’s The garden of earthy delights.

(1) Reindert Falkenburg, The land of unlikeness: Hieronymus Bosch, The garden of earthy delights, W Books, c2011, 320 pages, page 10.
(2) The crystalist manifesto (Al-Bayan Al-Kristali) was first issued in Arabic in the late 1970s and was signed by Muhammad Hamid Shaddad, Kamala Ibrahim lshag and Naiyla Al Tayib.