2014 exhibition programme
WIELS
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354
1190 Brussels
Belgium
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 11–18h,
first and third Wednesday 11–21h
T +32 (0) 2 340 00 53
Franz Erhard Walther: The Body Decides
21 February–11 May 2014
Franz Erhard Walther: The Body Decides offers an in-depth look at an influential German artist (born in 1939 in Fulda, lives and works in Fulda) whose pioneering work straddles minimalist sculpture, conceptual art, abstract painting, and performance. This first exhibition for the artist in Belgium and one of the larger of his solo exhibitions to date presents a sweeping panorama of the artist’s production, bringing together pivotal works made between the late 1950s and the present and including more than one hundred sculptural and drawn works. The exhibition emphasizes the artist’s radical conception of the artwork as an “instrument for use” and the exhibition itself as a platform for social action. Curator: Elena Filipovic
Exhibition made in collaboration with the Franz Erhard Walther Foundation and the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
A full-color, richly illustrated ‘pop-up’ book accompanies the exhibition.
Work demonstrations and public programs complementing the exhibition are realized in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Brüssel.
Akram Zaatari: This Day at Ten
21 February–27 April 2014
WIELS presents the first major exhibition in Belgium by Akram Zaatari (born in 1966 in Sidon, lives and works in Beirut), who has emerged as one of the most prominent commentators on photography and the war in the Middle East. Zaatari’s practice is closely tied to the practice of collecting and excavation: Through books, photographic installations, and videos, Zaatari’s visual studies reflect on the shifting nature of borders and the production and circulation of images in the political context of the region. Coordination: Dirk Snauwaert
Allen Ruppersberg
16 May–17 August 2014
Allen Ruppersberg (born in 1944 in Cleveland, lives and works in Santa Monica and Brooklyn) is among the generation of American conceptual artists who changed the way art was thought about and made at the end of the 1960s. At WIELS, Ruppersberg presents one of his more recent works, titled No Time Left To Start Again/The B and D of R ‘n’ R, a sweeping survey of American vernacular recorded music, from folk to rock, and from gospel to blues. In parallel with the installation, Ruppersberg presents a selection of his previous works that echoes certain notions important to The B and D of R ‘n’ R, such as memory, the transmission of knowledge and the relationship between art and popular culture. Curator: Devrim Bayar
In collaboration with The Art Institute of Chicago
Robert Heinecken
16 May–17 August 2014
Despite having rarely used a camera during his career, Robert Heinecken (1931–2006) is widely considered one of the most influential post-war American photographers. The exhibition at WIELS examines a pivotal period in the artist’s career, during which Heinecken used a Polaroid SX70 camera. The presentation includes the first examples of works using this technology, starting in the mid-1970s until his most iconic project, the series “Lessons in Posing Subjects,” dating from 1981–82, and presented here in its entirety. Curator: Devrim Bayar
Rossella Biscotti
29 May–17 August 2014
Rossella Biscotti’s (born in 1978 in Molfetta, lives and works in Brussels) cross-media practice cuts across filmmaking, performance and sculpture—means through which she explores and reconstructs obscured moments from recent history, often seen against the backdrop of an individual’s relationship to state institutions. For her first solo exhibition in Belgium, Biscotti draws on the project she developed with the inmates of the woman’s prison on the island of Giudecca in Venice. In the course of six months, Biscotti ran a dream workshop during which the participants shared and recorded their nightly dreams. Curator: Dirk Snauwaert
Residency exhibition
12 June–17 August 2014
In 2013, WIELS inaugurated an annual summer exhibition that assembles a selection of its former artists- in-residence. Highlighting the importance of the residency program to the institution as a whole, this second edition profiles the new productions of an internationally diverse range of young artists. Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti
Ana Torfs: Echolalia
September 2014–December 2014
Ana Torfs (born 1963 in Mortsel, lives and works in Brussels) uses a wide variety of media in her work, from slide projections, sound, photography, and film to xerography, off-set printing, Jacquard weaving, and silkscreen. The relation or tension between text/language and image plays a central role in her work, and with it all the related processes of visualisation, interpretation and translation. Existing texts and/or images are often used as a starting point for Torfs’ works, which condense into precisely composed collages or montages that are suffused with elliptical allusions and reflections on cultural and political history. At WIELS, these concerns continue in a new installation specifically conceived for the space. Curator: Dirk Snauwaert
Mark Leckey
October 2014–February 2015
Mark Leckey (born 1964 in Birkenhead, lives and works in London) works in sculpture, sound, performance, and video. His earliest works as well as his most recent performances and installations equally reveal his resolute fascination with the material thing-ness of objects and the immaterial, pervasively disseminated digital image. Combing the iconography of popular culture, its brands and its products, and their relationship to desire, identity, and memory, his work explores the affective power that these exert on us. For his exhibition at WIELS, his first in Belgium and one of his largest to date, the artist will present a panoramic survey of both new and older work in addition to an artist-curated exhibition within the exhibition. Curator: Elena Filipovic
In collaboration with Museo MADRE, Naples
A comprehensive catalogue co-published with Haus der Kunst, Munich accompanies the exhibition.
Press contact
Micha Pycke
micha.pycke [at] wiels.org / T +32 (0) 2 340 00 51 / M +32 (0) 486 680 070
