MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM
MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM
MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM
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H A N S O P D E B E E C K<br />
° 1 9 69, T U R N H O U T<br />
A Birminghamstraat<br />
287 - 1070 Brussel<br />
T +32 2 528 87 18<br />
E info@<br />
hansopdebeeck.com<br />
W hansopdebeeck.com<br />
The oeuvre of Hans Op de Beeck gathers a variety<br />
of sculptures, of installation and video work,<br />
photography, animation film, drawings, paintings<br />
and short stories. His aesthetics is deliberately<br />
ambiguous and non-univocal: minimalist creations<br />
combine with their blown-up opposites, always<br />
aiming to articulate the content of the work as precise<br />
as possible. Thematically, the work of Hans Op de<br />
Beeck is concerned with the difficult relationship man has with time and space<br />
and with his fellow man. His images show non-existent yet identifiable places,<br />
moments and characters that appear to be taken from everyday life and capture<br />
the tragicomic absurdity of postmodern existence. Key to his oeuvre are the<br />
abstraction of time, the fading of distance and the disembodiment of the individual<br />
– results of globalisation. Also under discussion are the changes brought to our<br />
living environment by developments in media, automation and technology. Hans<br />
Op de Beeck has been referring to his work with the name ‘proposals’: he leaves<br />
it to the viewer to decide whether to take the work, – which is irrefutably fictional,<br />
constructed and staged – serious as some parallel reality or to immediately put<br />
it into perspective as no more than a visual construct. This relationship between<br />
reality and representation, between what we see and what we want to believe,<br />
between what is and what we create for ourselves in order to make it easier to deal<br />
with our own insignificance and lack of identity, is of great importance. The output<br />
is a series of slumbering, insidious, melancholy and astonishing images.<br />
‘Sea of Tranquillity’ (2010)<br />
Full HD video, 29 minutes, 40 seconds, colour, sound<br />
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels;<br />
Galerie Ron Mandos, Rotterdam – Amsterdam. Coproduced by the National Centre for Visual Arts<br />
- Ministry of Culture and Communication (F), the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (B), Emmanuelle and<br />
Michael Guttman and Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains<br />
6 4