Nasreen Mohamedi
& Charlotte Beaudry
28 May–14 August 2011
Opening:
Friday, 27 May, 18:30–21:00
Brussels
www.wiels.org
Notes-Reflections on Indian Modernism
Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–1990) is regarded as one of the most important Indian artists of her generation, and her paintings, drawings and photographs, produced from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, constitute a key body of work within the modernist canon. Nasreen Mohamedi was born in Karachi and raised in Bombay. She travelled to London and attended St. Martin’s School of Art from 1954–1957, returning to India in 1958. In India, her austere, small-scale drawings and use of minor gestures contrasted with the figurative narrative works produced by many of her contemporaries. While Mohamedi’s drawings from the late 1970s onwards tend toward the resolutely abstract, they intimate cultural references, which become explicit in her photographs—in which historical architecture suggests an aesthetic link between modernisation and Islamic heritage. WIELS is the last venue of this traveling exhibition, curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson. It includes a large selection of works on paper, drawings, photographs, documents and ephemera retracing the work of this seminal artist.
Organized and initiated by Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Charlotte Beaudry
Get Drunk
With the exhibition Get Drunk, whose title evokes the exuberant rebelliousness of a punk slogan, Charlotte Beaudry (Huy, 1968) presents paintings, drawings and video’s, which are the result of ten years of artistic practice. Her work in various media reveals an uninhibited relationship to reality. Her large portraits of adolescent girls or the most trivial objects are always represented frontally and without context or supporting narrative. Far from providing the easy comfort often associated with painting, they solicit a provocative interaction with the viewer. Portraits, depictions of open handbags and masks seen in her paintings frequently point to something outside the frame of the image and invariably question our position in relation to the image. As a result, Beaudry’s latest body of work emanates a contagious, emotional and vibrant vitality that leaves no one indifferent.
WIELS
Contemporary Art Centre
Brussels
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354
1190 Brussels
www.wiels.org
Wed–Sun
11:00–18:00
Nocturne, ever 1st and 3rd Wed of the month
11:00–21:00
Mon & Tue
closed
Press
angie.vandycke@wiels.org
T +32 (0)2 340 00 51