After Venice, it is now the turn of Brussels to welcome the famous exhibition of the two artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys.
In the Antechambers of the Centre for Fine Arts, the dolls are given another disposition as last summer in the Belgian Pavilion on the Biennale of Venice and the public is a part of the world where the dolls live in.
After passing through a steel fence the visitor finds himself in a closed world, a kind of underworld inhabited by twenty-two dolls. About ten of them are automated and make repetitive movements. The others, immobile, gaze into the distance. They are all mute, ashen-faced and locked into a kind of immutable trance. Condemned to an eternal monotonous existence from which there is no escape; though it is hard to imagine that any such desire exists within these creatures.
On the walls, by way of distraction, a number of coloured line drawings hang as a vague reflection of the surface world. Line drawings of humorous and disturbing scenes alternate with idyllic representations of bygone times.
The exhibition can be seen as a Contemporary Museum of Folk Art in which the human form is on show. A human form that feels safe in a closed world and that has built a society in which inertia and apathy reign supreme.
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys are seasoned artists in the creation of fictions filtered through hyper reality. They are intrigued by modern society's state of psychosis. Their works of art are the expression of this constant angst.
In the fantasy of De Gruyter & Thys, these dolls come to life after closing time, when an employee at the Centre for Fine Arts locks up the steel fence for the night. They then wander the halls and gaze with a certain wonder at the pictures on the walls until the sun rises on another day.
In 2019, MONDO CANE was first presented at the Belgian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale with Anne-Claire Schmitz as curator. It was given an honourable mention by the jury.
The website mondocane.net and the exhibition catalogue form an integral part of the exhibition.
Ph: © Philippe De Gobert
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