ART-PRESENTATION: Poetic Faith
A person can never perceive truth and fiction at the same time. But there is such a thing as “poetic faith” or the “suspension of disbelief”. This is a mechanism in our brains that automatically triggers a temporary suspension of our belief in rational, perceptible reality, thereby allowing us to believe in the fiction we encounter at that moment. Indeed, whilst reading a novel or watching a film, we ‘believe’ in the story, however implausible it might seem. “Poetic faith” is considered an essential ingredient for storytelling of any kind.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: S.M.A.K Archive
In our over-informed society, in which the boundary between real and fictitious reality and information has become exceedingly blurred, the exhibition “Poetic Faith” can be seen as a tribute to the power of, and belief in, the imagination. It challenges us to set aside the faith we place in our own (rational) reality, thereby allowing us to perceive ‘impossible’ artworks as ‘perfectly possible’ at first sight. The term “suspension of disbelief” was first coined in 1817 by the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Almost two centuries later, in the early 21st Century, a neuroscientific explanation for the term was provided by the American literary critic and psychoanalyst Norman N. Holland: when a person is confronted with a fictional narrative, the brain automatically switches back to perception mode and shuts down all logical systems linked to concrete reality. This is why we find it so difficult to identify lies. Indeed, in the first instance we always believe what we see. Only afterwards are we in a position to make a conscious effort not to believe something.
Shikh Sabbir Alam studied at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts and at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, India. Freehand drawings are the starting point from which his reflections take on a more permanent form, mostly as paintings. Recurrent themes in his work are our perception and the way in which our brains influence our observations. The artist also questions the boundary between reality and fiction. Flora and fauna are his key sources of inspiration.
Marie Cloquet creates new, monumental landscapes. Her starting point is the extensive archive of black-and-white photos that she takes during her travels around the world. She uses the negatives as ‘sketches’. The artist projects them in her studio and prints them onto drawing paper treated with light-sensitive emulsion, which creates an unusual effect. Cloquet tears up the prints and then brings the fragments together to create new landscapes, with traces of watercolor here and there. Her work lies somewhere between land art, photography and painting.
Leo Copers’ work is extremely diverse. His oeuvre predominately consists of sculptures, installations and performances. Using a minimal and conceptual formal language that is peppered with symbols and metaphors, the artist creates surreal works with a knowing wink. Copers often explores the natural elements and the tension that is created between polar forces such as gas and fire, or water and electricity. Danger, destruction and transience are recurrent themes in his work.
Hanne Darboven was a member of the first generation of conceptual artists. She saw numbers, classification systems and repetitions as non-descriptive forms of writing. Her sequential oeuvre has a romantic, subjective, almost obsessive character and takes an abstract approach to reality. Like a bookkeeper, Darboven attempted to conquer time day by day, page by page, book by book; or at least to measure time in divisions which are functional for herself, but unfathomable for us. Her almost forcibly neurotic work, which is awash with figures, numbers expressed in words and diagrams, runs into thousands of pages.
In his artistic practice, Markus Degerman combines and reconstructs elements from visual art, architecture and design. He removes them from their context and charges them with fresh meanings. His interventions often experiment with the spatial design of public, urban or institutional environments. As well as being active as an artist, he is also Dean of The National Academy of the Arts in Oslo.
Joseph Grigely, who has been deaf since the age of ten, explores language and communication. He has studied the art of conversation between deaf and hearing people. The starting point for his installations is his personal archive, which contains remnants of discussions with people who can hear. This can include scribbles on serviettes, small drawings, photos of hands in the act of writing, and half-smoked cigarettes. He uses these residual elements to shape everyday discussions and encounters in a conceptual way.
Jorge Macchi makes drawings, sculptures, collages and installations and is unsurpassed at understanding the art of achieving maximum emotionality with minimal form. By making abundant use of a reduced, ephemeral visual language and everyday materials, his work appears to resemble conceptual art. And yet it also generally contains a condensed, romantic emotionality, which seems almost baroque. Through this combination, Macchi lays bare the emotional spheres that do not generally emerge in our everyday observation of reality, or even remain hidden.
Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists of the post-war period. In 2009, he won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Nauman made his debut as a performance artist in the mid-sixties, but employs a wide range of media: from video, installation, sound composition, sculpture, graphics and photography, to neon sculpture. And yet Nauman continues to consciously describe himself as a sculptor, partly because he views the medium as being of secondary importance. In other words, Nauman never sees an artwork as a finished product, but as an active process in which we too are involved.
Navid Nuur devised the term ‘interimodules’ to describe his highly divergent works, which range from installations, performances, drawings and texts to sculptures and paintings. These ‘interim objects’ can be situated somewhere between the idea of the artist and its implementation in the form of an artwork. Many of Nuur’s works have a fleeting existence, and are only preserved in a publication after the event, or as documentation. Moreover, many of the materials with which the artist works (such as light, water, air or even ice-cream) are by nature transient.
In the early years of his career, Panamarenko (the pseudonym of Henri Van Herwegen) organised playful actions and happenings and made poetic objects. He was fascinated by the natural sciences and the movement of insects and animals. It was his friend, the artist Joseph Beuys, who made Panamarenko realise that the technical constructions he was making alongside his poetic objects could equally be considered art. This is how Panamarenko’s largest ever flying machine, the airship known as ‘The Aeromodeller’ (1969-71), came into being. In the following decades, the artist would become famous with his fantastic flying machines and vehicles.
Giulio Paolini was a member of the Arte Povera movement which began in Italy and was chiefly active in the 1970s. In the early 1960s, the artist conducted research into the mimicking of reality within painting. One area of interest to him was perspective drawings: an opportunity to conjure up three-dimensional space within the flat surface of the canvas. Pencil lines appeared on his white canvases which allude, amongst other things, to the rules of scientific perspective that have been used for centuries. Paolini’s works gradually became more complex, with the canvases forming spatial installations on the wall and receiving mythological or art-theoretical titles.
As a sculptor and installation artist, Mandla Reuter explores the ambiguous relationship between art and the notion of ‘place’. His interventions, which are subtle but at times also radical, call into question typical artistic notions such as ‘art production’ and ‘presentation context’. Reuter often bases his work on the specific characteristics of the space in which he is exhibiting. He sometimes appears to entirely detach this from the real world, evoking an alienating atmosphere in which fiction proliferates.
Jason Rhoades is known for his associative, life-sized sculptural installations in which he combines conceptual strength with a touch of humour. He utilised an astonishing array of materials and objects from everyday American culture. Rhoades did not allow himself to be pigeonholed as an artist and would flout all of the art world’s aesthetic conventions and rules. His installations were never finished. He treated every piece as a life-long project, continuously adding or removing parts.
Gil Shachar has a preference for images from the collective memory, such as fairy-tale figures, and for universal themes such as the father-son relationship. This recognisability leads to multiple associations in his oeuvre, which Shachar sees as enriching each piece and lending it greater meaning. The artist often begins with pre-existing two-dimensional images, such as illustrations or photos, which he converts into three-dimensional sculptures.
Nedko Solakov plays with the codes of art and the art world but is also critical of social, political, economic and societal reality. He connects his personal experiences as a Bulgarian artist from an ‘old’ communist system to typical Western-capitalist artistic strategies. Solakov is a born storyteller. Ironic and often absurd texts frequently underpin his drawings and installations. In his apparently simple stories and works on paper, which are imbued with a mildly melancholic sharp-wittedness, the artist sometimes deploys almost surrealistic fiction to mock social events, himself, his artistry and the entire art circuit.
Birde Vanheerswynghels constructs monumental charcoal drawings of sumptuous landscapes. In addition, she often embroiders onto previous work in order to gradually unfold new compositions. During this process, she makes use of Polaroids and photos taken with her mobile phone. This is because photography allows her to see more clearly what is missing from her drawings, or rather, what can be changed. The artist recently utilised the resulting archive of Polaroids and detailed images to create new work.
Jan Van Imschoot examines every facet of human existence. At times with a knowing wink, at others cynically or seriously, or all three together. The Ghent-based painter, who moved to France in 2013, disliked conventions and trod his own path, adopting a style that he himself described as ‘anarcho-baroque’: contemporary baroque with a touch of anarchy. He often uses found visual material as a starting point, or an event in his surroundings or in wider society that has affected him.
Tamara Van San studied sculpture at Sint-Lucas in Antwerp. She soon abandoned the classical technique of sculpting from a model and experimented with all manner of non-classical materials and shapes in vivid hues. For several years now, she has primarily been working in clay with brightly-colored glazes. She makes sculptural spatial installations for both indoors and outdoors, but in addition also creates small-scale sculptures for a more intimate setting. In her work, she plays a spontaneous game with the basic sculptural elements of volume, form and color.
Over the course of his career, Philippe Van Snick developed a simple, systematic formal language akin to Minimalism. He took control of reality through his own decimal system. This systematic approach yielded a colour palette comprising ten hues: red, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green, white, black, gold and silver. Van Snick used these shades to systematically evoke perceptions and – paradoxically – feelings.
With works by: Shikh Sabbir Alam, Guillaume Bijl, Marie Cloquet, Leo Copers, Hanne Darboven, Thierry De Cordier, Markus Degerman, Jef Geys, Joseph Grigely, Jorge Macchi, Bruce Nauman, Navid Nuur, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Mandla Reuter, Jason Rhoades, Gil Shachar, Nedko Solakov, Birde Vanheerswynghels, Jan Van Imschoot, Tamara Van San and Philippe Van Snick.
Info: S.M.A.K., Jan Hoetplein 1, Gent, Duration: 8/2-31/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 9:30-17:30, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://smak.be
S.M.A.K., is temporarily closed due to the situation with the new coronavirus, until further notice about the state of affairs.
