Past exhibition at Lumiar Cité:

Robin Vanbesien

Gravidade

12.02 - 22.03.2015

Info
Press-Release (port)
Press-Release (eng)
Exhibition View
Film excerpt

Robin Vanbesien, detail of untitled (Gravidade), 2014, acrylic coating, soft pastel and charcoal on fabric on stretcher frame, 92 x 84 cm. © Photo Kristien Daem.

Because heʼs alone, a sailorʼs always telling himself who he is, writes Kathy Acker in her short story ʻLustʼ (1988), revisiting Jean Genetʼs ʻQuerelle de Brestʼ (1947), a novel about a young sailor and a trade-off between a murder and a transgressive sexual act. A sailor is nowhere home, always alone, which gives him the opportunity to act within the illusion of a mirage. Taking his cue from Ackerʼs and Genetʼs “sailor”, Robin Vanbesien unfolds a metonymic figure for a nameless desire circulating through painted partial objects and prolific poetic images invoked by words. Characters, genders and bodies appear at sea before the possibilities of an undecidably erotic (homoerotic or just autoerotic) fantasy. The relations appear dissociated, stemming from the desire of an emptied-out self. All seems to be given with the gravity that yields a passive tense of verbs, static gestures, and staged compositions. Landscape, painted or filmed, functions as the medium to circumscribe the figures. It reflects the notion of a framing gaze returned from its object in a specular dialogue. Although they seem to encompass each otherʼs plastic-pictorial unity, the author and its hero, the figure and the spectator, are conjoined in worlds separated from each other.

ʻGravidadeʼ takes its title from the eponymous film*, which is posed in the centre of a circular distribution of seven paintings in the exhibition space. The paintings partition a figure in the landscape, therefore forming a series of part-bodies as partial objects detached from both the figure and its imaginary surroundings (bollocks, penis, hands, tongues, fish etc.). The expressive pictorial quality in the filmʼs staging of figures through poetic quasi-dialogue renders it as another sort of painting toward which the other images in the room gravitate. Hence the film provides an illusion of restoring the lacking totality of each image on its own.

* Gravidade (2015, HD, 23ʼ) was produced during the artistʼs residency at the Maumaus Programme. Directed by Robin Vanbesien; Actors: Cláudio da Silva, Diogo Bento, Ricardo Vaz Trindade; Cinematography: Graça Castanheira; Sound: Isabel Dias Martins; Color Grading: Graça Castanheira; Sound Design: Bart Aga; Editing: Robin Vanbesien; Production Assistant: Rui Gonçalves; Text: Robin Vanbesien; Translation: Pedro Sena-Lino, Rui Gonçalves.

Robin Vanbesien (Ostend, 1979) lives and works in Brussels. He studied History at the University of Ghent and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam) and de Ateliers (Amsterdam). His recent solo and group exhibitions include ʻCelluloid Brushesʼ, Culturgest (Porto, 2015) / Ludlow 38 (New York, 2013) / Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2012); ʻlighting the throat = lighting the throatʼ, Objectif Exhibitions (Antwerp, 2014); ʻstray fire / ships to sink like thisʼ, Rupert (Vilnius, 2014); ʻF. Hodlerʼ (with Willem Oorebeek), Pinacoteca (Vienna, 2014); ʻWhat thinks meʼ, Taiga (Saint Petersburg, 2014); ʻduty-bound away from the keyboard of the screen of my faceʼ, WIELS Project Room (Brussels, 2014); ʻMonstrance Air Pumpʼ, San Serriffe (Amsterdam, 2013); ʻThe Incapacity Not to Enter into Every Skinʼ, Walden Affairs (The Hague, 2012); ʻVille en abîmeʼ, Hotel Charleroi (Charleroi, 2012) and ʻA Means to a Placeʼ, Mu.ZEE (Ostend, 2012). Among his artistic residencies are Maumaus Residency Programme (Lisbon, 2014/15), Capacete (Rio de Janeiro, 2014), Rupert (Vilnius, 2014) and WIELS Residency (Brussels, 2013). He is the author of the artist book ʻInstant Ruinsʼ (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2012).