Salft-Flowers-Ecce-Homo-1117.11.2017 - 25.02.2018

Exhibition: Ecce Homo. See Human

63 artists living in Belgium.

9 Locations

 

 

SALT FLOWERS

With Salt Flowers, the artist points out the necessity of a decent climate policy.


With President Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, the disbelief of many is put in the forefront once again.

The world, our climate is changing and this is happening more drastically than we suspect. Men is fooling himself and only believes in the advantage of their proper economy and not in the advantage of human kind.

Peter de Cupere uses an extreme scenario which shows that the water sea level rises. This kills the existing biodiversity. Sweet water becomes salt water. He looks for an utopic way of surviving particular to that situation. He replaces the by then disappeared white ice capes at the North and South Pole by white salt capes, won from the ocean. He presents a white salt nature with plants, fruit, vegetable and flowers created out of salt. They each have their own scent and thus a proper identity.

The 2 displayed Salt Flowers each have their own scent.  The strength of the work does not solely lie in the visual accomplishment of the flowers, but also in the choice of scents.Visually, the flowers are aesthetically and virginally white and the grains glitter in the sunlight. The artist knew how to attach the small grains to each other to a steady shape. Even though the spectator can be persuaded one hundred percent that the flowers are made of salt, they are far from the truth! All the flowers are made out of glass grains.The whole work is created around perception. How do we experience things?

How important is it to know what we see and observe? Because even the scents deceive. The wonderful fresh smells are in reality nothing more than WC fresheners, laundry products and aroma essences. They smell like flowers synthetically. And that is also what will remain in an extreme scenario if the climate change continues like this.

With the idea of ‘what you give is what you get’, the artist is thus questioning our environmental policy and economy. Both have an influence on the breeding result of fish and the cultivation result of plants. It is well known that too many fertilizers are being used, but also the overcultivation of fish is not positive for the fish maintenance.

Salt Flowers allows the spectator to experience olfactory what a possible result might be of our daily use of synthetic products (scents) and extravagant use of aroma extracts, a world in which we do not find any purely natural products. It seems to be a far from our bed show, but we encounter it every day in our daily life. The artist thus hopes that we will stop in time with letting us be deceived by multinationals who try to push us into synthetic cheap products. The synthetic smell of one of the flowers does not come near to the same health quality as the true scent in nature.

Making of the Salt Flower drawings

Making of the Salt Flower drawings from Peter De Cupere on Vimeo.

 

Artists: Philip AGUIRRE Y OTEGUI, Francis ALŸS, Charif BENHELIMA, Ruben BELLINKX, Fred BERVOETS, Thomas BOGAERT, Elke Andreas BOON, Michaël BORREMANS, Dirk BRAECKMAN, Ricardo BREY, Cris BRODAHL, Peter BUGGENHOUT, Anton  COTTELEER, Johan CRETEN, Berlinde DE BRUYCKERE,  Thierry DE CORDIER, Peter DE CUPERE, Ronny DELRUE, Wim DELVOYE, Peter DE MEYER, Kasper DE VOS, Johan DE WILDE, Arpaïs DU BOIS, Filip DUJARDIN, Jan FABRE, Kris FIERENS, Michel FRANÇOIS, Lara GASPAROTTO, Kendell GEERS, Elizabeth GEERTS, Karin HANSSEN, Kati HECK, Haider JABBAR, Ann Veronica JANSSENS, Gideon KIEFER, Sophie KUIJKEN, Marie-Jo LAFONTAINE, Thomas LEROOY,  Mark MANDERS, Kris MARTIN, Wesley MEURIS, Sofie MULLER, Otobong NKANGA, PANAMARENKO, Max PINCKERS,  Fabrice SAMYN, Kelly SCHACHT, Johan TAHON,  Sven ‘T JOLLE, Luc TUYMANS, Guy VAN BOSSCHE, Patrick VAN CAECKENBERGH, Joris VAN DE MOORTEL, Philippe VANDENBERG, Rinus VAN DE VELDE, Emmanuel VAN DER AUWERA, Liza VAN DER STOCK, Anne-Mie VAN KERCKHOVEN, Jan VAN IMSCHOOT, Jan VAN OOST, Jan VANRIET, Shirley VILLAVICENCIO PIZANGO, Sarah WESTPHAL.

The main goal of this exhibition is to explore the historical theme of the ‘Ecce Homo’ in a broad sense within contemporary art in Belgium.

We live in an era in which humanity and mankind are violated on different levels; more and more we are confronted by essential differences in the development and freedom of humankind in various parts of the world.

This exhibition wants to show how artists approach “la condition humaine” of today’s world.

There are no restrictions regarding gender or race and all art disciplines are incorporated: painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, installation, video, photography and performance.It was an intended decision to choose only artists living and working in Belgium with the exception of one artist that we could not ignore considering the subject: Philippe Vandenberg.

ECCE HOMO started several years ago in the mind of art historians Yasmine Geukens & Marie-Paule De Vil as a small group exhibition but evolved today into a grand event that takes place on several locations in the city of Antwerp.It has become a unique collaboration between institutions of all sorts: Ackermans & van Haaren, Bank J.Van Breda & C°, Museums Mayer van den Bergh and Maagdenhuis, Institute of Tropical Medicine, St. George’s church, St. Elizabeth Hospital, Gallery Geukens & De Vil, Marion de Cannière and the city of Antwerp.

It’s uniqueness also shows in the fact that it is the very first time in Belgium that so many artists, living in Belgium, of different age and gender, some of which still emerging while others with international fame, all come together and show work focusing on one main universal subject.

With this exhibition we do offer a forum for the artists but we ourselves equally insist on actively contributing to the development of man on a humanitarian base. Therefore, the art works in this exhibition are for sale and a large part of the profit from the sold works will be donated to HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH.While they are active in a broad range of activities and topics, we will focus on women’s and child’s-issues (child marriage, sextrafficking, gender-equality, women-empowerment, …)

ECCE HOMO is the third large-scale project organized by Gallery Geukens & De Vil.In 2008, G&DV organized UN-SCR-1324, an exhibition with only female artists that started in their gallery in Antwerp and later found its way to New York.Two years later, in 2010, the successful group-show When will they finally see the Power of Drawing was the first exhibition solely focusing on contemporary drawing in Belgium. ECCE HOMO is realized thanks to the support of Ackermans & van Haaren, Bank J.Van Breda & C° and the city of Antwerp.

More info: https://www.eccehomoantwerpen.com