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Author:   silke altvater  
Posted: 21.02.2007; 19:02:35
Topic: Hans Op de Beeck | e
Msg #: 58 (Erste Nachricht zum Thema)
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Hans Op de Beeck
* 1969 in Turnhout, Belgium, lives and works in Brussels


Imagination Becomes Reality Conclusion

Works in the Exhibition | Text



Hans Op de Beeck: Loss (the scultpural video installation), 2004
Photo: courtesy Goetz Collection


Works in the Exhibition

Loss (the scultpural video installation), 2004, single-channel video installation (b/w, sound), 11'



Text

Hans Op de Beeck's video installation Loss (the sculptural video installation), 2004 also operates with an architectural space. Here, a black-and-white video is projected onto the end wall of a specially constructed tunnel-like room. In a series of slow fadeouts the video shows images ranging from empty park-like gardens with ponds to ravaged World War I landscapes with blasted tree trunks. In a technique comparable to that used by Jochen Kuhn and William Kentridge, the film is based on drawn and animated images. Both the video and the installation engender melancholy spaces that act as projection surfaces for mental rather than physical images. In a highly poetic way Op de Beeck uses symbolism and illusionistic spatial techniques to encourage viewers to develop their own narratives. "In their lighting and in the way they direct the gaze, all these spaces generate in equal measure feelings of familiarity and discomfort. They are at once […] cosy and sinister. The uncanny, as Anthony Vidler has remarked, is not a characteristic inherent in places, but, in its aesthetic dimension, the representation of a mental projection. […] Hans Op de Beeck awakens in us a vague longing, as transfiguring as it is uncanny. His installations have the fascinating power to place us in an alienated state, half waking, half dreaming, a state in which we would not care to stay for long, but which we would not want to be without."(1)

(1) Doris Berger: Hans Op de Beeck, in: Night Sight, exh. cat. Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover 2005, p. 65.

Text excerpt »Images are generated by a gaze searching for new and personal insights. They are images of those gazing at the world« (Author: Stephan Urbaschek), Exhibition Catalogue Imagination Becomes Reality Conclusion