CÔTE D’OR: May 16th, 3 – 9pm

FRAGMENTA is pleased to announce its start into an arty summer season with the upcoming exhibition CÔTE D’OR. This title refers to the famous Belgian chocolate and to the chocolate in Goele De Bruyn’s film “z.t. (the visitor) 2004” where a mouse eats its way through a chocolate Saint Nicholas. There can also be made an association with the promised land that’s in the sight of refugees, while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.  This event will present works by Kris Van Dessel and Goele de Bruyn and take place in the public space of Valletta, at Lower Barrakka Gardens in Valletta.

NB: LOCATION HAS CHANGED from Upper to Lower Barrakka Gardens. … Same Gardens, same Barrakka, same Harbour, only Lower not Upper.

The Malta Experience – 1:500.000, Kris Van Dessel   During the FRAGMENTA event in Valletta / Malta, people are invited to bring a piece of wood which measures exactly 58 cm of length. Using the aluminum ruler as reference, Kris Van Dessel will check the length of this piece of wood. If the length matches, the owner of the piece of wood will receive a stamped certificate. This piece of wood is part of a series of free artworks, referring to the distance that (African) refugees need to cross in rickety wooden boats to reach Malta. Courtesy Annie Gentils Gallery

Côte d’Or refers to the famous Belgian chocolate and to the chocolate in Goele De Bruyn’s film “z.t. (the visitor) 2004” where a mouse eats its way through a chocolate Saint Nicholas. There can also be made an association with the promised land that’s in the sight of refugees, while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

The event is open to the public and free of charge. The artists will be present!

FRAGMENTA : CÔTE D’OR will take place as a one-day event on May 16th, between 3pm and 9pm only.

GOELE DE BRUYN °1963 Brecht, Works and lives in Antwerp
“Goele De Bruyn’s works, often containing elements from the immediate domestic environment, deals with a variety of formal and human concerns. By juxtaposing or overlapping functionality and the non-functional, the familiar and the strange, or by unifying them in their contradictions, her works are sometimes absurd or slightly comical, but are always marked by a specific emotional tension. The uneasy ‘being’, the melancholy and absence of the hybrid object reveal the works themselves as cultural constructions. The principles with which meaning is constructed are related to the staging of the works. Elements from earlier works are often reused, copied, relocated, altered, disguised. The work traverses different periods, its character contaminated according to the environment it infiltrates. In this way, Goele De Bruyn always again constitutes a mental space for every audience. Objects and environment often form a reassuring and disturbing whole. Disorientation is her point of departure. Once one has adapted, doubt is again renewed along the path of interpretation; there is a play of ‘disappointment’ in opposition to every expectation. She does not so much reveal the idyllic or touching aspects of the objects as their potential to become something else. The brute familiarity of the objects that appear are alienated from their referent, giving rise to a turbid, sometimes invisible or ghostly retranslation of the sign referred to.” (Free translation of Philippe Pirotte’s text, “The World Revised”, about Goele De Bruyn, A Prior Magazine #09)

Studies 1988-1991: Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, HISK, Antwerpen 1984-1988: Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, KASK, Antwerpen solo exhibitions (selection) 2014  Prospekt, Experimental Intermedia, Ghent 2013  Clean Speech & Soap, Netwerk / center for contemporary art, Aalst 2013  Artist book presentation, Clean Speech, Netwerk / center for contemporary art, MER 2011  Difference in memory & Clean speech, Casuallocations, Xiamen, China 2011  Soap—-Antwerp to Beijing, Casuallocations, Beijing, China 2009  Les mains sales, Secondroom, Brussels 2005  Borders for pillows, F18 HISK, Antwerp 2002  Goele De Bruyn, Netwerk Galerij, Aalst 1998  Wachtkamer, Vereniging Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, SMAK, Ghent 1994  Goele De Bruyn, DAG gallery, Antwerp 1990  Goele De Bruyn, Galerie Parbleu, Antwerp ———

KRIS VAN DESSEL °1967, Antwerp (Belgium), lives and works in Antwerp
“Through mapping, measuring and recording, Kris Van Dessel allows the overlooked to take centre stage in his work. Out of the everyday elements are tested on their potential to generate and crystalize into visual recordings of actions in time and space. Van Dessel’s work interlocks as a complex matrix of action and reaction, places and coordinates, time and duration. One element unravels another one and yet one more, as in a fractal structure. His work probes the object status of art, the role of the spectator and above all the intrinsic meaning of the artist’s function. To experience his work demands an engagement, an interaction with it that somehow goes beyond comprehending it as a mere work of art. In his own quiet but convincing language, Kris Van Dessel creates open structures enabling new realities, which eventually open in the world a wider perspective.”(Extracted from Sylvie Vandenhoucke’s text, “(DI)STANCE MADE VISIBLE”, about Kris Van Dessel)

Solo exhibitions (selection) 2015   Sampled History, De Garage, Mechelen, BE 2014   Vanishing Points, Galerie van der Mieden, Brussels, BE 2013   Distance, M > B, Galerie van der Mieden, Brussels, BE 2012   (A) Search For Useful Projectiles, Morguen, Antwerp, BE 2010   CROX345, Croxhapox, Ghent, BE 2008   Galerie Rob de Vries, Haarlem, NL 2008   Galerie van der Mieden, Antwerp, BE 2006   Galerie Maurits van de Laar, The Hague, NL 2006   La Pommerie, Saint Setiers, FR