MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM

H A R A L D T H Y S & J O S D E G R U Y T E R
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Jos de Gruyter (1966) and Harald Thys (1965) have
been working together since the mid 1980s. Both
known as audiovisual artists, their collaboration
is bound up with the realisation of works in other
media. Together they have been producing works
on paper, video and sound art. Their video work almost always starts from
trivial and almost corny situation and action: a discussion between a man and
a woman, who are trying to embellish their house (The Bucket) or a fairytale
story (The Curse). These familiar situations and fictitious observations are
disrupted via techniques which they derive from the dramaturgic jargon of
children’s theatre and TV-shows. Although their work is characterised by a
burlesque friskiness and a childlike simplicity and humour, it always embodies
a dark strand of paradoxical emotions or critical reflections. Another segment
in the video work of De Gruyter and Thys deals with the documentary codes
and conventions. They have produced a number of works in which they stage
historic figures, for instance P.P. Rubens and his two assistants Snyers and Van
Dijck. The work they produce in other media – drawings on paper, plasticine
dolls, computer graphics – is in line with their video work. In 1993 they set
up the exhibition Keizer Ro (ICC, Antwerp and Foncke, Ghent) which told and
documented the story of a fictitious emperor who was said to throw Belgium
into chaos with his acts and his theories in a period of three months time.
7 2
Installation view (2009)
Culturgest, Lisboa, Portugal, ©Culturgest