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Cheveux longs...cheveux courts
Regular price £28.00 Sale price £20.00 Save 29%In this new book and exhibition, 'cheveux longs… cheveux courts' Katrien De Blauwer revisits herself as a young woman by creating personae and telling their stories as if they were her own. Additionally, a new set of her more erotic 'Dirty Scenes' is presented.
For the public, De Blauwer has become known as the "photographer without a camera", compulsively seeking out magazines from the 1920s through the 1960s, cutting them up and reassembling fragments into frugal yet powerful compositions. But already in her first solo show, 'Double', it had become apparent that the artist strove to transcend the limitations of the collage medium. The transformation De Blauwer had set in motion then, has now come full circle. She has been progressively shifting shapes; e.g. experimenting with more slender works, stressing their horizontality or verticality.
Her typical confrontation between two images, or two parts of one cut-up image, is gradually replaced by a deeper tension. Ever more frequently, just one image joins together – or is trapped by – monotone surfaces, which are black as ink or bright with colour. Furthermore, De Blauwer explicitly intervenes, leaving physical traces on her material. The wrinkling, tearing or folding makes the materials look old and used; the intuitive drawing (in pencil) and painting (in acryl) on the other hand, make the works look spontaneous and spirited, like childhood creations.
Only recently, the artist started work on something new: her so-called 'Dirty Scenes'. These erotic images come alive with indistinct movements. The tenderness of bodily interaction and contact between woman and man is central here, and it is underlined by much softer pastel colours. Could these gentle scenes be the phantasies of De Blauwer’s feminine protagonists?
One element that always remains unchanged in De Blauwer’s itinerary, is the omnipresent reference to film noir and European avant-garde cinema. This not only comes about through the filmic images she uses, but also through the way they are treated. De Blauwer 'edits' her fragments with scissors, pencil and brush, before throwing these scenes into a sequence that tells the story of a woman. These imaginative sequences – beginning and ending with a 'still' image – come into motion the moment we start walking through the exhibition or start leafing through the new book that accompanies this exhibition.
Faint shelfwear, final copies.
Ingeniously, the artist cuts away vital pieces of information, 'relating’ the scraps that are left, and thus urging us to open up to unforeseen insights. De Blauwer treats these fragments as if they were her own past life experiences. Combined with the popular imagery she uses, her personal 'Erinnerungsarbeit' attains the level of collective memory. This work, the remembering through reassembling, is a daily routine – if not obsession – for the artist. Her obsession with fragments is indeed so great, that even the title of this exhibition, as well as the names of its 'chapters' (ISABELLE, caroline, SOPHIE…), have sprouted from her notebooks, in which she collects text fragments from newspapers, magazines, etc.
New publication 'cheveux longs… cheveux courts' featuring exclusively new and unseen work.
I Close My Eyes, Then I Drift Away
Regular price £60.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The idea for I Close My Eyes, Then I Drift Away by Katrien De Blauwer (b. 1969, Belgian) was founded as a commission for De Blauwer to anatomise archival works of François Halard (b. 1961, French) into a new and rare narrative. With a seductive and dreamlike state, bordering femininity and masculinity, she lets the observer immerse by the means of power structures and illusions, with nuances and parables to the contrasting career of Halard’s, yet with the most imaginable awe.
All photographs appearing in this book were taken by François Halard and accumulated on July 3rd, 2019 by Katrien De Blauwer in Arles, France. All artworks were made in Antwerp, Belgium by Katrien De Blauwer. The concept for this book was conceived by editor and designer Tony Cederteg, who also wrote the preface for the book.
First edition of 1,000 copies.
You Could at Least Pretend to Like Yellow
Regular price £60.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Katrien De Blauwer (b. 1969, Belgian) does not care much for the colour yellow—therefore, the tone is the basis for her latest work. Yellow; a colour equally representing clarity and honor, as well as cowardice and deceit.
Initially, while observing the new works, we couldn’t resist to draw a loose parable to Vilgot Sjöman’s 1967 erotic motion picture I Am Curious (Yellow); an original comedy about politics, the sexual liberation of a young woman, and psychological analysis. The film immediately attracted a ban during its release in the U.S., leading to a proceeding in the Supreme Court. Taking inflation into account, the film remained record-breaking among foreign releases in the United States for several decades. An American critic described the film as “about as good for you as drinking furniture polish.” Furniture polish, is in majority, yellowish—as well as its packaging labels.
The following day led to a coincidence when De Blauwer, while in an antique store, found the film’s book, published in 1968, which illustrates the film’s complete scenario. Meanwhile, De Blauwer, unaware of the film up until that point, is awaiting to see the actual film, and is consistently pretending to like yellow.
The book contains the verso of each work, which rarely has been shown before, and is as unique as its recto. All works are printed in their actual and individual size.
First edition of 450 copies (unsigned).