Past exhibition at Lumiar Cité:

Robin Vanbesien

Gravidade

12.02 - 22.03.2015

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.

My Image

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).

















































































































































































































Maumaus

Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar, 148 - 3º C
1050-021 Lisboa, Portugal
Monday to Friday, 10h00 to 13h00,
14h30 to 19h00

Tel: + 351 21 352 11 55
maumaus@maumaus.org

Current:

Independent Study Programme
Call 2024
Until 03.09.2023

Upcoming:

Manthia Diawara
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon
30.09.2023, 19h00

Commissioned by Serpentine, MUBI and PCAI Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative, as part of Serpentine's Back to Earth project.

Upcoming:

Maumaus

Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar, 148 - 3º C
1050-021 Lisboa, Portugal

The discussion will be in English.
Entry is free and limited to the number
of seats available.

PROBLEMATISING REALITY
Encounters between art and philosophy

Programme 4
Shot, counter-shot

Here and Elsewhere
(Ici et ailleurs, 1976)
by Jean-Luc Godard
and Anne-Marie Miéville

with Marwa Arsanios
and Ghalya Saadawi,
moderated by Stefanie Baumann

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Auditorium 2
16.02.2024, 18h30

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Sala 2, Zona de Congressos
14.–15.02.2024, 11h–13h,14h–17h

Upcoming:

Programme 4

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
16.02.2024

Programme 2:
(de)framing the frame

Meeting the Man:
James Baldwin in Paris (1970)
by Terence Dixon

with Sarah Lewis-Cappellari
and Kerstin Stakemeier

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Auditorium 2
23.11.2023, 18h30

Programme 1:
space, place and memory

with Billy Woodberry
and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Auditorium 3
13.10.2023, 18h30

Manthia Diawara
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom
Sharjah Biennial 15
07.02. – 11.06.2023

Manthia Diawara
A Letter from Yene
Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto
14.03.2023

Current:

Seminar
Amanda Boetzkes
Realism Without Authority
01.04, 04.04.2022
10h–13h, 14h–17h

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Registration is free but limited to the number of seats available. Please send an email with a short CV to admin@maumaus.org by 24.03.2022. Confirmation of registration will be sent by email. The seminar will be in English.


Lumiar Cité

Rua Tomás del Negro, 8A
1750-105 Lisboa, Portugal
Wednesday to Sunday, 15h00 to 19h00
or by appointment.
Tel: + 351 21 755 15 70
lumiar.cite@maumaus.org

Loretta Fahrenholz
Circle Navel Nil
24.04. – 27.06.2021

24.06 | 18h00 Online conversation with Sabeth

Buchmann, Loretta Fahrenholz and Jürgen Bock


Current:

Anna Schachinger
Allover
08.10. – 11.12.2022

07.10 | 18h00 Circulating Salt, Ayami Awazuhara
08.10 | 16h00 Opening of the exhibition


Current:

Cosima von Bonin
Boy at Work
15.04. – 23.07.2023

15.04 | 17h00 Opening of the exhibition

20.07 | 19h00 Talk by Diedrich Diederichsen

Dozie Kanu
PREENCHENDO VAZIOS
20.01. – 14.04.2024

20.01 | 16h00 Opening of the exhibition

16.03 | 17h00 Talk between Dozie Kanu

and Simon Thompson

Upcoming:

D(O)UBLE ACT
a conversation between
Dozie Kanu and Simon Thompson
16.03.2024, 17h00


Upcoming:

Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina with Leslie Thornton & Thomas Zummer
once in a hundred years

27.04. – 28.07.2024 | Lumiar Cité

18.05. – 28.07.2024 | Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg

A combined exhibition between
Lumiar Cité and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg.

A co-production by Lumiar Cité
and Artium Museum

14.10 | 17h00 Book launch with talk between

Alejandro Cesarco and
Miguel Wandschneider

| 18h00 Opening of the exhibition

Current:

Artium Museum, Vitoria-Gasteiz
24.03. – 24.09.2023

Upcoming:

Lumiar Cité
14.10.2023 – 14.01.2024


Collaboration:

The Educational Web
Kunstverein in Hamburg
01.04. – 06.08.2023

Closed 24, 25, 31 December and 1 January

Arne Kaiser and Jürgen Bock


In cooperation with Lumiar Cité:

Tiffany Chung
Thu Thiêm: an archaeological
project for future remembrance
08.06. - 08.09.2019

Johann Jacobs Museum

In co-production with Lumiar Cité:

Alejandro Cesarco
Other Recent Examples
24.03. - 24.09.2023

Artium Museum

The Educational Web
31.03. - 06.08.2023

Kunstverein in Hamburg



Maumaus/Lumiar Cité is funded by República Portuguesa – Cultura/Direção-Geral das Artes. With the support of Câmara Municipal de Lisboa and Junta de Freguesia do Lumiar.

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