Berlinde De Bruyckere

 As announced in my previous post, here we go on the tour of Berlinde De Bruyckere's work , "Sculptures & Drawings 2000-2014", in the Smak museum of Gent. You can see that there is something for every taste and age group. What a great policy to grant total freedom to photographers of all ages and skill levels.

"The exhibition (...) is conceived as a promenade taking in a select choice of drawings, sculptures and installations that bring to light the evolution and nuances of the oeuvre. It combines the core motifs of De Bruyckere’s oeuvre: the vulnerability of man, which is her chief theme, and the suffering body, which is the source of her visual idiom.( ...) The pivotal work is ‘Kreupelhout – Cripplewood’ (2012-13), the monumental installation which has previously only been shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Finally, drawings are an essential part of this exhibition. They are hung in series in the same rooms as the sculptures and enrich the associations and cross-connections that relate all the works to each other".

http://www.smak.be/tentoonstelling.php?la=en&y=&tid=&t=&id=582
http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/6/berlinde-de-bruyckere/biography/
http://www.hanstheys.be/artists/berlinde_de_bruyckere/

Jan Hoet

A favorable wind made this photo end up in my inbox. Again, I could not  NOT use the picture because we are talking about national pride and an international celebrity.  The picture was taken last month in China where Mr Hoet now works as the the curator of the Yinchuan biennial. He is building an exhibition around the theme 'The ego position of the artist'.  I apologize for the quality of the picture but that is what international air travel can do.
"Mr Hoet became known as the curator of the Museum for Contemporary Art in Ghent, which he re-named Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK). His flamboyant personality and his often intuitive, but always uninhibited comments make him an influential, but also controversial figure in the world of Art. With his immense popularity in the media, unusual for this sector, he created a huge goodwill towards his museum and for modern art in general. The SMAK brought cultural Ghent back to live, with many events outside the museum: he tried to bring art closer to the masses and vice-versa. Chambres d'amis, a renowned project of 1986 literally left the confines of the museum: works of art were conceptualised by internationally renowned artists in private homes and were displayed and performed in that particular space. In a later project the city of Ghent was completely taken over by Art in the concept of Over the edges in 2000 Hoet regularly works as a guest curator for other international art centra, among other Documenta IX in Kassel (1992)"  and as an artistic director  (2003 - 2008) of the Marta-museum in Herford, Germany.
http://www.venus-seminars.net/?q=enroll/seminars/7
http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/120513_yinchuan_biennial_jan_hoet_china_art