Strook's intervention for the festival 'The Crystal Ship'
Ostend, on the coast of Flanders, presents a great art festival curated by Jan Fabre that includes works by Marina Abramović, Bill Viola or Luc Tuymans in places like churches, stables, apartments… and yes, also some museums.
“I believe in the power and strength of beauty” , says the Belgian artist, playwright and stage director Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958) .
And even his biggest detractors will have to admit that Fabre has always been true to his creed. He now applies it again together with his collaborator, Joanna de Vos , with which he would curate the project TheRaft. Art is (not) lonely , which until next April 15 hosts Ostend , the historic coastal city of Flanders.
We said that Ostend 'hosts' the exhibition, but perhaps it should be formulated the other way around, since what we are really talking about is a city almost literally taken over by art , which spreads across the length and breadth of twenty three locations ranging from the most obvious (the main local museums and art centers ) to the apparently most preposterous (some stables , a beach front apartment ) through the most evocative (a ship anchored in the port ) .
Painting 'Life Raft', by Katie O'Hagan
Of course, we are also talking about a locality with some experience in being taken and that, unfortunately, has suffered invaders less friendly than contemporary art. At the beginning of the 17th century, for three years that must have seemed eternal, the spanish thirds under the command of Ambrosio Spínola they besieged and finally took Ostende with blood and fire, in one of those collective traumas capable of clearly marking the spirit of a population through the generations.
It is conceivable that the terrible history of the site of ostend It was part of the inspiration for Fabre and Vos. It cannot be by chance that the curators have chosen the painting Le radeau de la Meduse (The raft of the Medusa), painted by Théodore Gericault in 1819. This work already denounced a dramatic event of its time (the sinking of a French frigate due to the incompetence of a captain appointed to the position due to obscure political gossip) representing a human group huddled together in the very small space of a raft, and that already Luis Buñuel inspired the film the exterminating angel (1962).
For Fabre, the raft (that raft in the title) is, beyond a physical space, an element loaded with metaphorical implications : there are policies, with constant allusions to refugees, for example; but also strictly poetic (the artist as an adventurer, whipped by the inclemencies of the environment and always in search of new territories).
The decision also contains a nod to the seafaring tradition of the city and Fabre's predecessor, Commissioner Jan Hoet , which three years ago was commissioned to conceive another exhibition there under the motto of the sea.
Unfortunately, Hoet, whom Fabre considered in some way a 'spiritual father', passed away before being able to see his own exhibition open, but his inspiration is still present in many of the pieces and artists now selected by Fabre and de Vos.
Painting 'L'Apparition', by Antoine Roegiers
are altogether 73 artists , most of which have created specific works for the occasion. The ideas of the raft, the shipwreck, the refugee or, directly, the work of Géricault figure as a direct allusion in all of them, more or less literally. And it always highlights the way in which the pieces fit into the chosen spaces.
As might be expected, the point that concentrates the lion's share is the Mu.Zee , the main museum of the city. There, the impressive photographs of the Portuguese Jorge Molder, which achieves one of the best reinterpretations of La Medusa by portraying himself in the positions of several of the characters in Géricault's painting. Or the paintings of the Spanish Henry Martin, loaded with that terrible conception of the sublime in the nature of the romantic artist. and those of Michael Borremans , whose sculpture Pink , stranded in one of the city's fountains, appears with her head disturbingly submerged in water and thus converted into a kind of human raft.
Sculpture 'Rosa' by Michaël Borremans in front of the Ostend Casino
Nor are there any lack of more spectacular pieces by 'big names': a video of Bill Viola , some unusual sculptures by the video artist and filmmaker steve mcqueen (Oscar-winning director of 12 Years a Slave), an ironic installation by the French Orlan , a large-format painting by Juliao Sarmento or the scenic Uncertain Journey , variation on the installation that the Japanese Chiharu Shiota already displayed in his country's pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Artistic pieces by filmmakers such as mike figgis either Alex Van Warmerdam , or a theater director like Robert Wilson (sublime Lucinda Childs video) .
Installation 'Uncertain Journey', by Chiharu Shiota
In the 19th century Venetian Galleries await us, among others, Marina Abramovic Y Carlos Aires , with one of his best-known works, Black Sea , a parquet floor composed of fragments of wood from rafts of refugees arriving at the port of Cádiz. The Belgian performer Messieurs Delmotte , late representative of the most corrosive surrealist tradition in Belgian art, will also be present.
'Black Sea'; installation by Carlos Aires
The construction of these galleries was financed by the king Leopold II –Whose exploitation of his private colony, the congo , is still the subject of constant historical and artistic reflection as a great country's 'original sin' in exchange for having his own runner in them that would allow him to travel from the summer palace to the racecourse, whose races he was very fond of.
They are precisely the stables of the wellington racecourse another of the most interesting locations of the project: there you can see, for example, a chilling animation video by Luc Tuymans that pays homage to Goya and his execution on May 3, with a group of refugees reaching the coast to be shot down by an invisible shooter who is in the spectator's place.
The tour also includes several Christian temples, such as Onze-Lieve- Vrouw-ter-Duinen (Our Lady of the Dunes), where the remains of the painter James Ensor lie; the church of the Dominicans, with a huge plastic bottle sculpture by Michael Fliri; or that of San José, where it is surprising to contemplate the installation of Hans Houwelingen : a confessional planted in the middle of the transept, with the sculpture of a monkey inside and two fossils hanging outside, in an obvious criticism of the Church before which, however, nobody here seems to be too scandalized.
'Túbelá', by Hans Van Houwelingen in Sint-Jozefkerk
But perhaps the most suggestive locations are those that use the great asset of the city, the sea, to take it to the artistic field. Thus, in the middle of the port, the Mercator, a mythical ship that in 1936, two years after its construction, brought to Belgium the mortal remains of Father Damien, apostle and martyr of lepers, from the island of Molokai. It is in one of her cabins where she appears to us practically as an apparition a small and exquisite work by the now famous Luc Tuymans , performed when he was just a beginner.
For his part, in a sober apartment in the Europa City , one of the tallest buildings and also considered one of the ugliest in the city, compete in spectacularity the real views of the beach and the videos of Pieter Geenen or Elisabetta Benassi.
Luc Tuymans' Zeeofficier on the Mercator ship
According to the organizers of the exhibition, with it not only has attend the artistic call fans from other parts of Belgium and Europe (an hour and a half by train separate Ostend from Brussels), but rather that the Ostend people themselves rediscover, following the guide, corners of their city to which they previously did not pay much attention.
Paintings from 'The Raft series', by Enrique Marty, at the Brasserie du Parc
Ostend's effort to become a attractive destination for lovers of contemporary art, which is also manifested with the urban art festival Crystal Ship , for which each year a selection of creators intervenes some of the city's buildings with large wall paintings. Following the route of these buildings is another of the attractions of a visit to the city.
Back to The Raft, the idea is to turn the event into a Triennial of which this would be the second edition, each time with a different curator at the helm. Given the precedents -Hoet and Fabre are very heavyweights-, the truth is that the bar is quite high.
Ricky Lee Gordon mural for 'The Crystal Ship' festival