Past
This July, spontaneous art Happenings will take place in over 30 locations around the globe.
In the spirit of the golden age of happenings, these spontaneous works will erupt and be led entirely by you, the participants.
At this time the Happenings themselves are a secret that will be revealed on the day.
It is totally free and you can expect the happening to last about an hour.
These new ‘Joy Sandwich’ Happenings will wrestle once again with recurring themes in Semple’s work - ideas of technological isolation, physical community, connection and the impact of art on societal mental health.
With several communities around the world still failing to reconnect after covid the artist hopes that these Happenings might be a small way to bridge the gap between our connected digital lives and the real world.
Stuart Semple is a multi-disciplinary British artist, who over the last 25 years has presented several performances and Happenings including his HappyCloud work where artificially generated eco clouds in the shape of smileys are released into the sky. First released from outside Tate Modern in London, the work has been presented by Hong Kong Arts Center, Denver Art Museum and The Whitworth. Cities including Dublin, Toronto and Moscow have hosted the work.
Pre-Pandemic Semple’s ‘Hug Huddle’, took place at London’s tower bridge where strangers embraced one another. His ‘Emotional Baggage Drop’, took residence at Denver’s Union Station - where passersby could confide an emotional burden in a stranger, in a structure akin to a catholic confessional. Semple’s ‘Jump’ for Federation Square in Melbourne gave the simple instruction to the public to play on a giant inflatable white platform. Whilst ‘Something Else’ took in the entirety of London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery last summer, with a series of participatory happenings woven through a complex set of installations and performances.
He is perhaps best known for his online performance project around the Blackest Black and Pinkest Pink paints, where he famously banned fellow artist Anish Kapoor from using them, before disseminating multiples of them to hundreds of thousands of artists on the condition that they confirmed they “were not Anish Kapoor, or associated with him”.
Speaking of ‘Joy Sandwich’, Stuart Semple explains: “We are at a time of hyper-communication, where we are in touch globally like never before. At the same time, I feel our digital bonds have atomized us. I’ve always been into happenings, and the way the seemingly spontaneous can transform everyday life and people into art.Art has become so loaded, so complicated. Bizarre in its cannibalism by commerce. I hope, more than anything that these works create memories for those that participate, and maybe an idea that people coming together is art in its own right”.
« Sull’Impronta »
24 June - 8 July 2023
Vernissage: Saturday 24 June, 16hr - 19hr
Performance: Saturday 1 July, 17hr
With percussionist, Stefano Corbetta.
Two sculptural researchers have as a common trait,
the use of imprint to create a « space of sound ».
On one side , the testimony of a past sound; traces like fossils that reconstruct a score, a tactile path of listening.
On the other, couples of elements ; sensitive to enter into a relationship of acoustic resonance.
The contrast between flat and curved volumes, between full and empty, distinguishes both works.
In one case, it coexists in a single support that offers us the photograph of a past sound. In the other, it takes the form of a dualism of acoustic systems, inert but potentially capable of generating sound.
Andrea Strizzi is an Italian sculptor trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, where he currently works. His current project "Toccare il suono - Impronte Sonore" proposes a series of audio-tactile installations, created with the participation of percussionist Stefano Corbetta.
The drumsticks of the musician leave on the surface of the fresh clay the traces of the sound action, the sound of which is recorded. The baked clay, which bears witness to it in the manner of a score, allows you to tactilely retrace the generative path of the work, accompanied by listening through headphones to the sounds that have marked its furrows.
Francesco Strizzi, trained in lutherie at the Civica Scuola di Liuteria di Milano, graduated in sculpture from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and in Sound-Art at the ARD&NT Institute in Milan. He proposes a series of works entitled « Relazioni Invisibili » in which two types of geometric solids, arranged as inert elements, carry within them the potential generation of a harmonic sound.
The two systems, parallelepipeds and hollow spheres are tuned two by two on the same frequency and if coupled, they enter into a sympathetic relationship, they resonate, they generate a sound.
The sounds resulting from these dualisms, recorded, becomes a musical composition that accompanies the visual tension between the elements.
Watch a video about their work and the exhibition,
Gallery Nostrum Presents, S.C.U.M.
An international exhibition of female and female-identifying, analogue, collage artists.
May 20th – June 18th 2023.
In 1967, Valerie Solanas published the SCUM Manifesto(the Society for Cutting Up Men). In 1968, she was charged with the shooting and attempted murder of Andy Warhol.
This exhibition is not about that.
There is a rich history of collage, decoupage and assemblage in Belgium and S.C.U.M (Selecting and Cutting Up Magazines) will bring to Wavre (BE), analogue collage artists from all over the world.
Previous group exhibitions at Gallery Nostrum have been carefully selected and for such a small area, generously spaced. S.C.U.M will pack the gallery, with dozens of works. Unable to maintain a polite distance, they will jostle for space, chatter amongst themselves and vie for attention; transforming the gallery into a collective collage of some of the best examples of contemporary analogue collage.
Participating artists:
HP Heinz (UK), Michelle Granville (IE),
Charlotte Callens (BE), Tetiana Dudka (UA),
Ottavia Marchiori (IT), Ruxandra Niculae (RO),
Mariángela Abbruzzese (VE), Olga Gvindzhyliya (PT),
Delinconnue (RO), Mallie Hellström (DE),
Yuliia Lukianova (UA), Zuza Rozanska (DE),
Paris Triantafilou (US), Sophie Fourneau (BE),
Vira Dutchyn (UA), Karin Vyncke (BE),
Christel Marchal (BE), Jessica Russo Scherr (US).
For installation photos please visit our blog and instagram account.
support group
'support group' is an exhibition featuring the work of Francesco Battistello (IT), Laura Dauchet (FR) and Stefano Moras (IT).
Three artists explore the existence or absence of 'support' figuratively and literally in their work.
11.03. 2023 - 29.04.2023
For installation photos please visit our blog and instagram account.
bodies: noun / verb.
noun
plural noun: bodies.
The physical structure, including the bones, flesh, and organs, of a person or an animal.
verb
3rd person present: bodies
To give material form to something abstract.
Inge Dompas, Caroline Ledoux, Charles Lemaire, Antoine vans,
Ehrling White.
January 14 – February 18, 2023.
Vernissage Saturday January 14. 16hr -19hr.
The work of Inge Dompas (BE) is about the transiency and volatility of life. The transient figures she observes depict the anonymity of the masses as well as the rare and precious moments of true contact and intimacy. www.ingedompas.com
Caroline Ledoux’s (BE) current focus is our impossibility as a species to exist in the world. Deserted landscapes peopled only with silhouettes, buildings or armchairs serve as fossils of our existence. Her work places us on the threshold of a self-regulating world that chooses to continue without man. instagram.com/ledoux.caroline
The photographs of Charles Lemaire (BE) concentrate on the human body and skin (tattoos, scars, body modifications, aging). With these works, the focus is intensified to the point where the flesh becomes a landscape and the marks of human inhabitants and interaction are clear. www.charleslemaire.eu
The film director Antoine Vans (BE) uses painting as an antidote to some of the lighter aspects of his “other profession”. His canvases embody the frustrations he would otherwise be unable to capture and express. instagram.com/antoine.vans
In describing some of the pieces included in this show, Ehrling White (Ca/US) paraphrased a text by David Hinton. That there is a bridge linking the body itself and the act of art-making. The corporeal form that creates, or lives, and sheds its skin. The leaving it behind, is a natural process. Maybe art making, being very human and laden with history, thoughts, afterthoughts, and second thoughts, is a neurotic attempt to calcify some fraction of it all, give it a body, like a fossil, for others to make of what they wish, or not, long after we’ve moved on. www.ehrlingwhite.com
For installation photos please visit our instagram account.
What remains…
22.10.22 – 23.12.22
Vernissage: Saturday 22nd October 15hr -18hr.
Participating artists: Dilum Coppens, Hadrien Loumaye, Axelle VM Philtjens, Mathieu V Staelens, Francesco Strizzi.
With the question, what remains…? Comes the insinuation that something has been lost, removed, destroyed or forgotten.
What that could have been, be it corporeal, spiritual or temporal, was at the forefront when selecting the work for this first, group exhibition at Gallery Nostrum.
What remains… is an exhibition of five artists living and working in Belgium.
Dilum Coppens (1993 Asse, Be) is preoccupied with meaning and the search for its true nature. He intertwines text and imagery, mythology and modern references. From the surviving fragments of ancient texts (the rest being lost or deliberately destroyed) he invites multiple interpretations that refuse to be tied down.
It appears at first glance, many elements or distractions have been removed from these paintings by Hadrien Loumaye (1999 Brussels, Be). The saturated colour palettes and the delicate nervousness of the gestures, creates an ambiguity to produce canvases that defy their scale.
What remains of you, by Axelle VM Philtjens (2000 Alken, Be) was the starting point for this exhibition. She views the world in layers and transient parts.
To her, photography is a tool to expose and dissect these layers. With the destructive techniques of her experimental polaroids, she exposes facets to the viewer of themselves and the world that surrounds them.
Mathieu V Staelens (1980 Ostend, Be) has a long history of investigating the figure, exploring identity and the personality industry. With his recent subjects, the mask, the costume, the meat has be stripped away. In this exhibition, two of Mathieu’s recent skeletal works are shown alongside two older pieces, where the figure is absent, leaving small but grandly poetic works.
The sculptor Francesco Strizzi (1990 Guissano, Italy), captures the folded stages of origami shapes. It is what remains of this meeting that is framed by the light and shadow on the white plane of the plaster.
For installation photos please visit our instagram account.
‘Hello?’ – Paintings by Chris Dennis.
September 3rd – October 15th, 2022
Gallery Nostrum’s first exhibition features an artist showing for the first time in Belgium but whose work is very familiar to the gallery.
‘Hello?’ will present a carefully selected group of paintings made up from three series he has been working on for over 2 decades.
‘My paintings are produced in lieu of a 'real' conversation and display a preoccupation with surface and texture. The figures in these ‘Therianthropic’ pieces, are not some other-worldly creatures from Science fiction. The narratives have been carefully obfuscated and the likeness hidden. The Suffocates and The Aviarist series are two sides of a manufactured fugue state, from where, I explore ideas about biography /autobiography, authorship and the unreliable source.
The ʻPlease Be Quiet, Please’ paintings are continual. The title comes from the first short-story collection by American author, Raymond Carver called: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976). The paintings are the essence of the larger, more narrative paintings reduced back down to just paint. Like speech or thought bubbles, it spills into, or regurgitates out of disembodied heads from previous works.
‘Things you should have said and the things you wish you hadn’t’.
Chris Dennis (1974) grew up in England. He studied at Bournemouth Arts University, completed his BA (Hons) at the University of Wolverhampton and was awarded his MFA from the University of Art in San Francisco (USA). He has lived and exhibited across the United States, New Zealand and Europe. In 2021, after 5 years living and exhibiting in Berlin, Chris moved with his family, to Belgium.
