Concept

Tangents is the title of a group art show that will take place in the heart of Gent from the 20th of September until the 19th October 2008. A number of national and international artists are taking part in this new exhibition. Photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings and a video piece will be on display.

This intriguing group of individuals has been put together to create a dialogue between northern European and Latin artists but also to celebrate art for the sake of art.

Each of the participants has already taken part in various exhibitions in their home land as well as in the rest of Europe: William Paats (py) and Dácil Granados (es) both represented their countries in the Biennale of Venice in 2008. Marlies Davans (be) Nele Tas (be), and Tom de Visscher (be) are three well known upcoming Belgium artists. Their art pieces will be sharing a room with those from Nayra Martin Reyes (es), Tarek Ode (es), and Americo Pinanez (py), in between others.

Art lovers will be delighted by such an interesting and challenging experience and the general public will enjoy the beauty of each of the pieces on show. We are here to open a new door to the international relations of Belgium’s art world!

Nayra

Fienne Platteeuw

The Belgium artist Fienne Platteeuw has made a new sculpture for this exhibition. With her piece she wanted to make the public interact with her piece. Fienne made a hollow cube out of wax of 60cm. (I liked its tactile surface, somehow reminded me to Joseph Beuys’s). The cube was placed on a low stand with four wheels; under it, there was a movement sensor. By the side a strong lamp stood quietly with the light off.
At the opening night the public began arriving to the gallery. As soon as someone was in the surroundings of the piece, the sensor registered the movement and consequently the light turned on. The lamp will be on as long as the person(s) is standing in that very place.
The wax melted under the hit: the longer the interaction with the public, the more the “destruction” of the piece. She likes to say it that way. To me, I don’t see it as a destructive process, but as an intervention of the people in to the shaping of the sculpture. I find it interesting: the public could choose where to stay longer or shorter near the piece, but not where the lamp was standing, neither could be expected/contralloed the way that the wax would melt and later solidify.
By the end of the exhibition the cube had significantly changed its shape. And there was wax all over the floor.

Nayra

Pictures opening night

Here the last group of pictures i got from the first day.

Posted at the very end. Enjoy!

Closing Day / Finissage

Next sunday 19.10 will be the closing day/finissage of TANGENTS. Everyone is welcome to join us at the gallery and have one last drink.
For such occasion there will be something special to drink and probably some unexpected music...

We'll be open from 2pm.

Hope to see you then!

Performance #4 - Anja Verheyen

Everyone is invited next Friday 17.10 to the last performance at TanGents. The Belgian artist, Anja Verheyen, will come from Antwerp to show us “Out/of/control”. In her performance she uses a video projected upon herself combined with body movements and percussion on the wall... difficult to explain… so you should come and have a look by yourself.

Everyone is welcome. We’ll be open at 19u and the performance will be at 20u. The bar will surely be open to enjoy a drink.

Tarek Ode

Tarek Ode is a very special photographer to me. We met many years ago through the lenses of his camera, yet at the time when the digital photography was at its infancy. He was making his living out of working for a model agency and I was starting with an unstable career as a model.

His photographic work is remarkably mysterious. He travels often and each visit to another hemisphere inspires him to create a new series. Landscapes or interiors are often his themes. He has also produced a series of portraits: “Ciudadanos”. One way or another, his images are always presented to us within a dream-like atmosphere. His images ask to be recognised as geography for themselves, as a proposal of the world for the world.

He doesn’t restrain his field of creation to the photography itself. In between other projects, he has also directed two short films. He filmed “La Spirale” in Paris, with which he won the price to the best photography in the Festival Ateneo en Corto -Spain- and got to be finalist in the Cinema Festival of Tapiales, in Argentina.

He has received many grants and has been published in various art magazines and catalogues. His work has been shown in places like Barcelona, Paris, Croatia, Belgium, Argentina and New
York.

"Escritos romanos"

He is currently living and working in Tenerife. If you like to know more about his work check out his website:

http://www.tarekode.com/

Patricia Delgado

With the graphic works Lego azul y Lego rojo, Spanish born artist Patricia Delgado introduce us in her poetic world. She studied in La Laguna’s University of Fine Arts in Tenerife and followed “Free art graphics” in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Belgium). She is currently living and working in Tenerife in the fields of painting, illustration and etching.

"Lego Azul" "Lego Rojo"

About her work I couldn’t say anymore that what is to see and to read at her blog. You should have a further look: it’s worth it!

http://patrisdelgado.blogspot.com/

Today 12.10 the gallery is closed

Due to unforeseen circumstances the gallery is closed today.
Our most sincere apologies for the caused inconveniences.

Annelies Van Camp

Annelies Van Camp is a Belgium visual artist. She lives in Gent and has her studio at Nucleo's Leopolds Kazerne. She works with photography and installations. For Tangents she has created the slide-installation ‘5:32pm’. An impossible situation. She projects on the wall the reflection of the light that goes trough a window. But there is no window there to be found.

'5.32pm'

About her work:
Perception is the basic theme in my work. Through my work, I try to question our way of perception. Hereby, I shall manipulate and/or accentuate the original situations.



Themes/situations which I manipulate, concern the physical appearance of a certain space or even seemingly banal gestures; all things we don’t even notice anymore because of their banality, things we don’t actually ‘perceive’. Things we are supposed to know (a priori).

'Pavillion'

http://anneliesvancamp.blogspot.com

09.10 Performance # 3 Eva Ackerman – violin

Performance # 3

09.10 at 20:00h

(This week’s concert will be on THURSDAY instead on Friday)

The violinist Eva Ackerman will play a very special seleccion of songs for the TANGENTS public. Everyone is welcome to enjoy the musical sensuality of this young and talented Belgium musician.

The entrance is free and the bar will be open until the last person leaves.

Yonny Correa solo: Contraformation.

Yhonny Correa (co) was coming during the week before to rehearsal at the gallery space. To be able to dance comfortably he covered the slippery tails floor with sand. His performance Contraformation was a combination of choreographed movements and improvisation. Judit Ruiz, Spanish dancer that works with the Belgium Aan van den broek, assisted him to put together this show. They were inspired by the butterfly. They focus precisely on the transformation that such delicate creature go throughout its life; from the larva to the mug, to the beautiful and free spirited insect.

He performed Contraformation two times; dancing along the song "Con la frente marchita" from the artist Adriana Varela. The reaction of the public was warm. At the end of the show they all clapped with enthusiasm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsw3fTNdrxU

The same night the musician Paloma Samper surprised us bringing her guitar and playing for us a few of her self wrote numbers. The title of the song after which she invited Yhonny Correa to dance the second time was Mariposa loca.

In fact that Friday had a complete program: The artist Fienne Platteeuw show one of her black and white experimental films. It’s about 1.50’ m long and filmed in Gent: short but sweet. With this projection we could only get a little taste of her work. We hope to be able to show more of her films before the end of TANGENTS.

Nele Tas

Past Friday 03.10 Nele Tas came to do surveillance at Tangents. She hadn’t seen yet the expo and so we talk long about it. She has also organized the art exhibition Temporary Cities in Lokeren. Nele is now sharing her living time in between Berlin and Belgium. At the moment she’s busy with new exhibition projects in the German capital.




These two untitled paintings to see at the expo are an example of her second series of paintings about the contemporary condition of inevitable belonging to the masses:

“In our society, all former role models of a sovereign individuality have disappeared: the authentic artist, the unworldly philosopher, the anchorite, the dandy, the adorable screen goddess. Belonging to the masses is our fate. In the words of Sloterdijk, isolation has perished, what remains is co isolation”.
(…)

“This condition of co isolation has always been in the focus of my pictorial expression and imagination. I chose to explore the subtle balance between being an individual and not being one by operating with a strained perspective from above. This perspective, namely, confirms the mutual lack of commitment. It isolates the spectator from the scene of the painting. It puts him both in the position of a voyeur and that of an outsider. The most characteristic result of this way of visualizing people from above is that the human face is no longer visible”.
(…)

“The first series of paintings registrates the collective movements of people in the city.(…) In contrast to the anonymous masses, the second series of paintings portray individual persons with whom I am very close (…) I attempt to catch their expressivity by painting their typical hairline. Strangely enough, this parting of the hair, this small part of the visible scalp, is an intimate and vulnerable part of the body to which one as a person does not relate directly”.

Nele is also having a group exhibition now in Mechelen togheter with many other artists: EXHIBITION Cultuurcentrum Mechelen / De Garage Van 27-9 t/m 23-11

Ada Van Horelbeecke

Ada Van Hoorebeke was at Tangents last Sunday 28.09. She came with her sympathetic mother. Americo Pinanez welcomes them and spends with them a pleasant evening talking about art and the like. They very much liked our exhibition and encourage our initiative of bringing the Belgium-north European art(ists) and the Latin together.

Today another art work was sold. This time one of Americo Pinanez the sculptures.

Ada participated with the work Lost Nature.
(There are not visible on the picture, but in each top corner of the paintings a pink little radish was hanging. Along the days has passed the vegetables have been shrinking)


“Lost Nature”

Once the seeds, on the painting on the left, were real, little plants.
Now, you can hardly imagine … like a lost memory that slips away.


Ada Van Hoorebeke



At the moment Ada is living in Berlin and is busy with new exhibition projects. She is also one of the 20 finalist to the Rodenbach 2008 contest for professional artists.

Ada is also having a group exhibition now in Mechelen with many other artists: EXHIBITION Cultuurcentrum Mechelen / De Garage Van 27-9 t/m 23-11

3.10 Performance # 2 Yhonny Correa-dance

Performance # 2
3.10.08
20:00h

Tomorrow evening the contemporary dancer Yhonny Correa will perform a solo at TANGENTS.
Afterwards we’ll show a short black and white experimental film made in Gent.

The entrance is free.

Photos 26.09 from Performance 1 Guitar concert Fernando Gonzalez

The guitar concert from Fernando Gonzalez was in a enjoyable and intimat atmosphere. Aterwords, the musicians inmmerse therselves in conversations. Mostly with the assistence of a beer or a wine...

Some photos of the opening II

Here we have Erika Bus (with the white bag) and Elena Wener (with purple top), both clothes designers.

Luba -russian painter-, (boy in blue ?), Pancho -owner of the gallery- and Americo -sculptor and organiser of Tangents toghether with Nayra-.

At the right with the white hat Mira Hejia, participant artist.

Musician Bert surprised

Some photos of the Opening

Public arriving at early hours

Annja and Patrick

Tom de Visscher, participant artist.

Nayra, Roberto, Fienne, Bert and... i forgot!
all of them participant artists.








Annick, thanks for helping us all the way!!

Tangents on AVS Television.

We were on TV.

Last Friday 26.09 we were interview by the Vlaamse televisie AVS. We had the opportunity to explain to our region all about Tangents. The program was around 5 minutes long and was on after the evening news. It was also repeated a number of times the following days. Images of the art works were shown, along with our comments and some Spanish music in the background….
Vanessa Declerq (on the photo) was the interviewer. Her program is called Kiosk and it informs about the cultural events that are happening in the region of Oost Vlaanderen (west Flanders).

Check the video at:
http://www.garagetv.be/video-galerij/avspubliek/kiosk_centrum_26092008_tan_gents.aspx

Dacil grandos and Dacil Manrique's Economia domestica

The video "Economia domestica" from Dacil Granados and Dacil Manrique was inspired by the flemish painting " El Cambista y su mujer". From this painting exist different versions: one in the Prado museum, in Madrid (with Dacil in the image below), made by Quentin Massys in 1514 and one inthe Louvre in Paris, made by Marinus van Reymerswaele in 1539.

This painting is the most known image to illustrate the economic activity of that time. We can see a men counting coins on the left and a woman at his right looking at his movements, both sitting behind a table. They are inside a house representative of the medium-high classes of the XVI century in Flanders.

With their video work Dacil Granados and Dacil Manrique wanted to talk about the actual situation of the artist. In their video we can see a modern interior. Behind a table a couple is sitting, to the right the woman, to the left the man. In the middle there is a mirror, in the flemish style, in which we can see the reflection of the filming camera. The man is counting money and writing down notes on a little note book; the woman is looking bored; she stares at a magazine and from time to time, gazes at his activity.

This work is a humble comment about the non stopping need of being aware of the little money we have, aware of the last penny we can get. How could us, artists, use our little incomes in the most effective way to be able to keep on creating?

Nayra MR

For more pictures of their visit to Gante:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8030789@N06/sets/72157607473821509/

26.09 Guitar concert with a latin feel

ON FRIDAY 26.09.08 at TANGENTS

from 19.ooh (precise time still to confirm)
Free entrance:

just have a drink at our bar!

We have de honour to present in an intimate concert a

FERNANDO GONZALEZ

(chile)

Fernando con la Reina Fabiola!

When you see Fernando Gonzalez at his concerts, you will find the most varied styles, the most diverse eras, a multiplicity of combinations of instruments for chamber music and symphonic music, as well as a musical discovery across the globe. One feels great emotion while seeing that a simple instrument of six strings can produce infinitely diverse sensations, which range from the dense depth of the universal until the sublime lightness of virtuosity. Through his music one understands that in art - and that in all cultures – music, more than the interpret reality, plays a very important role in the refinement of the spirit.

Jean-François Letraublon
École normale de Paris
Conservatoire de Versailles

you will be able to listen to his music and read about him in nd, en and sp in: http://www.fernandogonzalezguitar.com/

SEE YOU ON FRIDAY!!!

Spanish Artists

Roberto Miranda, Julio, Dacil Granados y Nayra

Roberto came all the way from Berlin, Dacil granados y Julio, desde Madrid y Tenerife.

Gracias!

(los veremos de nuevo por aqui)

Roberto Miranda

Solving some technical problems...

Nayra Holding Marlies Davans Zonder title / 2008

With Pancho, working at the spot light for Fienne's Platteuw Cube