Penthouse
Resin, hemp, pigment
10 x 65 x 50 cm
Edition of 10
2007
Content
In this exhibition RRC functions as a firm that develops products and offers them for sale as it is the case in any casual store. All by all, the works that are shown in Roofing appear to belong to a shop for Minimal Art. Out of the formal aspect of curved, colorful rectangles appears a sort of one-person shelter for protection against all weather conditions. Precisely what Penthouse, the title of the work, etymologically means. In this ironic and irritating exchange between severe artistic formalism and practical functionality, ROOFING, a larger shelter that can provide protection to a complete body, refers to the Painted Planks of John McCracken, while the Shelters remember us of the Single Stacks by Donald Judd. The RRC Store presupposes a gallery space to function. It does not only question the given subject of the white cube, but it also moves about in the tension field between socially engaged art and commercial practices. The potential of different connections and coherences within the work is very high which makes it readable on different levels. This group of works unites an ironic context and the most minimal form of expression with a complex engagement to highly actual political and social thematics.
Excerpt from the text ‘Protect me’ by Stefanie Kreuzer
PROJECT
With his RECYCLABLE REFUGEE CAMP project, Ives Maes probed the derailment of contemporary hyper-ethics. His latrines, wells, shelters and coffins, fabricated in a natural resin, raise ethics to a manic state. The Recyclable Refugee Camp tackles the ethical imperative that encourages art to intervene in the world, localizing the epicenter of a new utopia inside the boundaries of the art world itself.
Excerpt from the text ‘An economy of truth’ by Wim Peeters, published in Flash Art nr. 235, 2004
EXHIBITION
Roofing
Koraalberg Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
25/01/07 – 10/03/07
Solo exhibition