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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

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