Jill Magid: The Migration of The Wings / Leen Voet

Jill Magid: The Migration of The Wings
American artist Jill Magid premieres a new body of work commissioned by M Leuven. The exhibition follows the movements and resonances of one of Leuven’s most iconic art works—The Last Supper by Dieric Bouts—through a multimedia installation.

The Migration of the Wings is a visual and sonic meditation on the forced migration of the triptych The Last Supper (1464–1468) by Dieric Bouts, which was dismembered in 1707 and stripped of its wings. Throughout the painting’s history, the wings, depicting scenes of Jewish diaspora from the Old Testament, have been repeatedly stolen, exploited as commodities, used as political tools of negotiation and as reparations of war. Meanwhile, the central panel, which shows a nearly still scene from the New Testament, has remained at Saint Peter’s Church in Leuven.

Jill Magid evokes the cyclical movement of the wings through sculptures and a two-channel film that enters the interior spaces where the wings traveled. In the 19th Century, the panels were split between the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and the Bode Museum in Berlin. In 1919, as stipulated in The Treaty of Versailles, they were returned to Leuven only to be forcibly removed by the Nazis in 1942. They were then buried in the salt mines of Austria until 1945, when they were recovered by American soldiers and returned to Leuven, where they remain today, hinged to the central panel.  

As in much of Magid’s practice, this new body of work intimately questions how objects can be deployed as political pawns, and how these objects come to contain the traces of violence that resonate throughout history.

Jill Magid has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern (UK), Whitney Museum (USA), The Modern Art Museum Fort Worth (USA), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico), The Renaissance Society (USA), Magasin III Museum of Contemporary Art (Sweden), and the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands. Magid is a recent awardee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship and VIA Art Fund, and The Calder Prize. Her award-winning feature film The Proposal (2018) was released in theaters internationally. Her work is currently on display at Centre Pompidou, Paris as part of the collection.

Curator: Valerie Verhack

Leen Voet
Leen Voet creates series of paintings that are combined in spatial installations. M will present several of these groups of work from the last 15 years of her practice. The impetus and starting point for each of the series is the specific interest of the artist in both cultural practices and elements found in her own environment. Her subjects, which include family, autonomy, religion or education, provoke reflection on power relations, social structures and artisthood. Each series starts from its own logic, rules, or precepts which in turn lead to new variations and decisions. Her works challenge us to consider our affective connection with the things that surround us. How does context and expectation guide our gaze? How do we look at images? What can a painting be?

Leen Voet’s paintings hover between figuration and abstraction, bringing together vibrant colours and geometric shapes in a balanced composition. Each painting stands on its own, yet takes on additional meanings through its place in the series. Throughout each series, Leen Voet explores variations and other painting styles, or plays with multiplicity, duplication and uniqueness. The spatial arrangement and the way the works relate to each other reinforce both their connection and singularity. In this exhibition, several series are brought together in a sequence of rooms, and complemented with drawings. In the tower room of M new work, based on three historical works in the M-collection, is displayed. 

Leen Voet lives and works in Brussels. She had solo exhibitions at Netwerk Aalst, Villa Arson, Nice (France), The Living Art Museum (Nýló), Reykjavík (Iceland), CIAP, Hasselt, Etablissement d’en Face, Brussels, FeliXart Museum, Drogenbos, trampoline, Antwerp, Kunstbunker Forum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Nuremberg and Baronian, Brussels. She participated in many group exhibitions and her work is present in various collections. 

Curator: Eva Wittocx