ART CITIES:Brussels-Jan Fabre

For more than 35 years Jan Fabre has been one of the most innovative and important figures on the international contemporary art scene. As a visual artist, theatre maker and author he has created a highly personal world with its own rules and laws, as well as its own characters, symbols, and recurring motifs.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Templon Archive

With the exhibition “The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp / Bacchus / Christ (2016). Special creations for The State Hermitage Museum”, Jan Fabre presents at Galerie Templon in Brussels a series of works produced for his exhibition “Knight of Despair, Warrior of Beauty” at St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in 2016. In creating these works, destined for the Rubens Room at the Hermitage Museum, Jan Fabre drew inspiration from the Flemish master, thus paying him poetic tribute. His work features the themes of the city of Antwerp as metropolis, the secrets of Christian faith, the Christ as artist and Dionysian mysteries. A highlight of the exhibition are Fabre’s famous ball point paintings. He drew entire large scale pictures with blue ball point pens. From further away they look like a plain blue landscape, but if you move closer, you will see that they are actually nudes. Fabre uses his works to speculate openly and tangibly about life and death, physical and social transformations, and the nature of cruelty as seen among both animals and humans. He defines, lives and expresses himself as a “knight of despair” and a “warrior of beauty”. As emphasized by the artist and acknowledged by critics and researchers, his work goes back to the traditions of classic Flemish art, which he admires. Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens are important inspirations. Metamorphosis is a key concept in any approach to Jan Fabre’s body of thought, in which human and animal life are in constant interaction. Some unprepared visitors were shocked by the works of Fabre, especially much of the viewers were angered by the “Protest of the dead stray cats” and “Carnival of the dead mongrels” that encapsulate stuffed animals, but Fabre himself has repeatedly told reporters that dogs and cats that appear in his installations, it is stray animals dead on the roads and he is trying to give them new life in art and thus to conquer death.

Info: Galerie Templon, Veydtstraat 13A, Brussels, Duration 18/4-2/6/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.templon.com