STEVE VAN DEN BOSCH Quote Unquote

Steve Van den Bosch Quote Unquote @ Van Der Mieden until October 22, 2011

A SLOWDOWN AT THE MUSEUM part 3

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A SLOWDOWN AT THE MUSEUM part 2

a short text by Mihnea Mircan on Cathedra for A Slowdown at the Museum

“Cathedra came into existence while I was preoccupied with Barnett Newman and Abstract Expressionism’s notion of a picture being both physical and metaphysical. The physicality of canvas, frame and paint, in relation to a notion of the picture as a possible place of experience. A statement by Newman for his second solo show at Betty Parsons, acknowledged this: ‘There is a tendency to look at large pictures from a distance. The large pictures in this exhibition are intended to be seen from a short distance’. With this in the back of my mind I started working on something that involved a wall text or title placard, ‘devices’ commonly accompanying and referring to – nearby – artworks. Wanting to produce a work that oscillates between its own presence and its subject matter, I superimposed one on top of the other.” One of Oscar Hugal’s constant preoccupations is distance and the modes of imprecision it can generate and accommodate. The distance that is indicated – and somehow embodied – in Cathedra is the route separating Extra City from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and us from the close inspection of Barnett Newman painting, of the same title, held there. The wry equation in the work pairs the closeness of sensorial engagement and the quasi-mystical absorption solicited by Abstract Expressionist painting (“We are reasserting man’s natural desire for the exalted… We are freeing ourselves from the impediments of memory, nostalgia, legend, myth… Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life’, we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history”, wrote Newman in a 1948 text titled The Sublime Is Now), the cultural gap separating us from that defunct mindset and the topographic remove between the two places of experience, that of the work and its ‘model’.
Hugal’s fine print, as blue as the blue expanse of Newman’s painting, compresses an entire array of gestures and positions that articulate, in their disparity and discontinuities, a vexed relation to tradition. At another level, Hugal pairs the preeminent tool of today’s knowledge transmission, Google, and the difficulty of an initiation into the terms, procedures and rewards of abstract art. Via Google, one could either obtain a low-resolution reproduction of a Newman painting, or traffic directions as to how to go and see one. These regimes of experience overlap in the work, which offers abstracted directions and pure calculations: a set of movements to be performed in order to reach the radiant immediacy of the painting, the choreography linking an abstract body, an abstract road and a painting that belongs to another place in time. copyright © 2011 Mihnea Mircan & Oscar Hugal

FRANKFURT part 1

Wouter Van der Hallen and me have been granted a 3 month residency – September untill November – at the Kulturbunker in Frankfurt. Parallel to this we are both participating in a groupshow at ATELIERFRANKFURT opening in November. More on that soon, but here are some pictures of the appartement.

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THE SECOND ACT part 2

Pictures of The Second Act build up can be viewed here.
The festival is opening later today at 19:00 at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam.
Be sure to go there and take a look. Pictures of my installation – Here & Now -
will be online soon.

A SLOWDOWN AT THE MUSEUM

A Slowdown at the Museum
Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen
Tulpstraat 79, 2060 Antwerpen, België
Opening Thursday 1 September at 19:00 with guided tour by the artists
2 September – 23 October 2011
With Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan, Mike Cooter, Nico Dockx with Thomas Verstraeten and Helena Sidiropoulos, Oscar Hugal, Irwin, Kris Kimpe, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Shahryar Nashat, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Javier Téllez and Christophe Van Gerrewey

how-to ROTHKO

a statement by Mark Rothko - adressed to Pratt Institute - November 1958

The recipe of a work of art – its ingredients – how to make it – the formula.

1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death – intimations of mortality …Tragic art, romantic art, etc… deals with the knowledge of death.
2. Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationshipto things that exist.
3. Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.
4. Irony. This a modern ingredient – the self-effacement and examination bywhich a man for an instant can go on to something else.
5. Wit and play … for the human element.
6. The ephemeral and chance … for the human element.
7. Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always theform that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions ofthese elements.

copyright © 2006 by Yale University

THE SECOND ACT

8-11 September
De Brakke Grond
Amsterdam

Festival opening: Thursday, September 8 at 19:00

Photography and performance embrace during The Second Act, a four day festival initiated by Time to Meet, an international platform for contemporary artists, and curated by Chris Clarke. The festival brings together over forty artists in a lively program of performance, screenings and discussions, alongside an extensive exhibition throughout the entirety of de Brakke Grond.

The title of the festival refers to the theatrical concept of the three-act play. The middle section stays unresolved, allowing the narrative to go in any direction. Things can take a drastic turn, without warning or notice, and it is this moment that The Second Act seeks to capture, to extend and to explore.

The Second Act investigates the intersections between photography and performance. It questions how performance can be captured through the intervention of the camera, and how the live action can say something fundamental about the potentials and pitfalls of photographic documentation. The Second Act treats photography as a live practice and as a medium that is never permanently captured in a still image.

goodbye

A last glimpse of Model For A Manual before it disappears into the archives of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

press & publications Liene Aerts

Liene Aerts, who i.a. works for KIOSK in Ghent , was so kind to write a short text on my work in context of Prijs Burgemeester Camille Huysmans 2010. Here it is:

Nieuwsgierig naar de logica onderhevig aan onze blik, tekent Oscar Hugal een beeldverhaal uit waarvan de kleur, taal, symbolen en kijkregels secuur worden afgewogen. Het voor de C. Huysmansprijs uitgekozen werk Model for a Manual (2010) van Hugal stelt een schematische voorstelling voor, een handleiding tot het bestuderen van een kunstwerk. We zien een schap, een potlood, en een symbool. Het idee ervan werd naar eigen zeggen pas duidelijk na het intuïtieve samenbrengen van deze drie elementen. Wat betekenen deze elementen ten opzichte van elkaar? Ze lijken een – al dan niet bewuste, al dan niet constante – evenwichtsoefening tussen een conceptuele, rigide esthetiek enerzijds en een open, associatief spel anderzijds te symboliseren.

 Zoals Model for a Manual voor Oscar Hugal het begin lijkt aan te kondigen van een onderzoek naar de logica van het kunstwerk, zo werkte Marcel Duchamp met Manual of Instructions for Étant donnés (1966) naar een zogenaamde eindpunt toe. Het is een paginalange, uiterst gedetailleerde beschrijving van hoe het kunstwerk Étant donnés in en uit elkaar gezet moet worden. Als men echter de details letterlijk zou nemen, zou men lezen dat dit gedocumenteerd proces juist veel aan de verbeelding overlaat en niet vast te pinnen valt op slechts één vorm van begrijpen. Zo schuilt er achter Model for a Manual ook geen gefixeerd idee, maar wel een constante dialoog tussen zijn verschillende elementen, over hun associatieve betekenis en of het idee er nu al dan niet voor het kunstwerk was. Speels lijkt het werk ons uit te dagen met de boodschap dat het precies is zoals het zich voordoet en dat het wordt wat je er zelf van maakt. Of zoals Hugal het zelf uitdrukt: dat het werk aanvangt op het moment dat je er naartoe stapt, en eindigt op het moment dat je er niet meer aan denkt. copyright © 2011 Liene Aerts