ART-PRESENTATION: Jan Fabre-30 Years/7 Rooms

Jan Fabre lives and works in his native city, Antwerp. He is known for his powerful figurative or abstract drawings executed in blue ballpoint and his sculptures fraught with surface ornament. Fabre’s early drawings and sculptures of the 1970s reveal his abiding interest in performance art. Fabre’s works, which treat the weighty subjects of life, memory, and death by indirection, often come across as great feats of physical endurance.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Deweer Gallery Archive

The collaboration between Jan Fabre and Mark Deweer Gallery started in 1985. The exhibition “Jan Fabre – 30 Years / 7 Rooms”, which celebrates thirty years of collaboration, is extensive and unique presenting a broad overview of the first historic objects, drawings, sculptures and installations, up to the latest works. The gallery is divided into seven themed rooms, built especially for the occasion. Room I – Brainhearts: The exhibition starts with Fabre’s most recent work, the double brain sculpture “The brain as a heart, the heart as a brain” along with two additional models-studies. An arrow strikes the base of the brain stem and fully pierces it. The symbolism of the arrow that pierces a heart is so common in cultural heritage that it is almost impossible to see the pierced body part other than as a heart. Fully in accordance with Fabre’s overarching artistic vision, the symbols of reason and feeling, which are usually seen as opposites, are here brought together in a single work. Room II – The Hour Blue: This is one of the most famous groups of works in Jan Fabre’s oeuvre, dating roughly between 1977 and 1991. Under the theme of the Hour Blue, the hour of twilight and the transition between night and day, Fabre, using a blue Bic ballpoint pen, expresses his views on the art of drawing. Room III – Shelter-studios: Nine basement models are presented in the immediate vicinity of the two large basement installations “Shelter-studio for the Chilean artist-warriors” and “Cleaning women I & II” .The models and the installations are based on Fabre’s recollections of personal contacts with seven Chilean illegal immigrants who were hidden and offered a bed in a basement in exchange for cleaning jobs. The shelter models represent mostly secret artist’s rooms, not accessible to anyone. The shelters also reveal Jan Fabre’s different appearances. The shelter models and for that matter all Fabre’s thinking models occupy a very important because consistent place in Jan Fabre’s oeuvre. Room IV- Offerings to the God of insomnia: Jan Fabre here presents an ensemble of new eye-sculptures. The theme, which first emerged in the work “Offerings to the God of insomnia”, is shown for the first time in Belgium. Fabre developed the theme of the artwork that looks back on a monumental scale in the permanent installation “The Gaze Within (the Hour Blue)” which he realised for the royal stairway of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Room V – Umbraculum: The impressive installation “Umbraculum” is again set up in the room where, in 2001 it was first presented for the first time in the ‘90s. The work is essential to a proper understanding of his personal visual language in general. The installation is imbued with the horror of the cemetery and the atmosphere of the chapel, places that often occur in Fabre’s work, and generates a tension that hovers between life and death, in the greatest tradition of symbolist art. Many lines in his work lead to this work, and many start from there. Room VI – Is the brain the most sexy part of the body? Fabre’s fascination with the brain as the seat of the imagination is also well known. In this room are brought together a number of thinking models and research drawings on the human brain. The eponymous film which Fabre made together with the biologist, entomologist and philosopher Edward O. Wilson in 2007 is projected in the Blackbox. Room VII – A meeting / Vstrecha: In the late 90s, Jan Fabre has collaborated with the Ilya Kabakov, a unique and historic collaboration that was initiated by the gallery in the 2nd half of 1995. Drawings and sculptures by Fabre in collaboration with Kabakov and the movie which Fabre and Kabakov made together are presented.

Info: Jan Fabre – 30 Years / 7 Rooms, Deweer Gallery, Tiegemstraat 6A, Otegem, Belgium, Duration: 4/11-20/12/15, Days & Hours: pls contact the Gallery, www.deweergallery.be