WARMENHOVEN & VENDERBOS Blog » Vision

Willy de Sauter | The essence of reality

W&V — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:30:08 +0000

Belgian artist Willy de Sauter creates fascinating work in the artistic tradition to which abstract art is the carrier and tool to represent the essence of reality. His artistic vocabulary can be characterized as a thorough abstraction of shapes and structures which are found back in nature, culture and architecture. He closely observes and analyses architecture or selected photographs and uses the results of these studies as a starting point to translate and transposition the existing form or structure into an abstract representation. In Willy de Sauter his oeuvre, places are reduced to non-places and associations with philosophy, visual art and architecture are fused into one general and open focus on culture.
At this moment Willy de Sauter has a solo exhibition at Phoebus gallery in Rotterdam , the Netherlands. The show will run until march 4, 2012.

Photos by: Willy de Sauter | Willy de Sauter website | Photo bottom: Isabelle Pateer | Phoebus Rotterdam

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David Bailey | We’ll take Manhattan

W&V — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:30:04 +0000

Recently filmmaker John McKay revisited David Bailey’s legendary 1962 trip to New York in the BBC film We’ll take Manhattan. During this trip Bailey had to shoot the photo’s for an editorial which was published in the April 1962 edition of British Vogue. He agreed to do the shoot only if the, at that time still unknown, Jean Shrimpton was his model. Bailey and Shrimpton where instructed to shoot mid-priced British fashions against the elegant landmarks and modern architectonic cityscape of Upper Manhattan. Instead of doing this David Bailey and his model Jean Shrimpton travelled with no hair or makeup artist and just his camera and an old teddy bear as prop through the more unpolished side of Manhattan. The shots he made melted raw and realistic street photography with fashion and high art and resulted in a legendary iconic series which captured the new liberated spirit of the decade.The photo’s of this shoot are later published in David Bailey: NYJSDB62 (Steidl, 2007). The film by John McKay explores the hedonistic love affair between the iconic photographer and the Sixties supermodel during this British Vogue fashion shoot.

Read more about David Bailey in this W&V blog post.

Photos by: David Bailey | David Bailey website | Photo 2 and 6 by: BBC | John McKay website

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Aristotle on art, conceptual layers and inner value

W&V — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:30:16 +0000

Quote about art from Greek philosopher Aristotle which can especially be considered as an early statement about conceptual art and design as it addresses directly the core principle of a conceptual design approach and the resulting physical product and its inner value, meaning and significance.

The Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoölogy. Together with Plato and Plato’s teacher Socrates, Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

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Tobias Rehberger | Sex and Friends

W&V — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:30:10 +0000

The work of Tobias his recent exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Belgium has now moved on and is on show at the Pilar Corrias Gallery in London. The show carries the title: Sex and Friends

Tobias his conceptual art installation set up at Pilar Corrias Gallery explores again the conflict between functionalism and aesthetics and again questions and plays with the notion of art and its various strategies. The main key element of this specific installation is transformation. This key element is not only linked to the change of the space itself but also to the transformation during a specific time frame and especially the transformation of the viewer, his/her behaviour and thoughts.

The series of sculptures in this installation seem abstract and find their “ghost-image” counterpart in the amorphous shadows they project on the walls. The art works transmit words and patterns onto the surfaces around them. The sculptures and their shadows are dynamic in a reversed way. They encourage the viewer to move and look at them from various perspectives. By doing that they shift and transform themselves. During brief moments of the day the shadows come together and form a “hidden” message. The visual message itself becomes less important as the event is basically already known and announced to the viewer who visits the gallery space, however what is important in this conceptual installation is that the upfront announced “hidden” feature/message does right away influence and transform the viewers behaviour and thoughts.

Sex and Friends is running until February 17, 2012 at Pilar Corrias Gallery, London.
You can read more about Tobias Rehberger and his work in this, this and this article on the Warmenhoven & Venderbos blog.

Photos by: Tobias Rehberger | Pilar Corrias Gallery

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Tokujin Yoshioka | Snow

W&V — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:17:29 +0000

Tokujin Yoshioka is a Japanese designer and artist who has worked under Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake and established his ow studio, Tokujin Yoshioka Design in 2000.
He created the installation called The Snow as part of the exhibition Sensing Nature at the Tokyo Mori Art museum last year. This spatial design made from artificial materials gives the viewer the sensation of experiencing light, snow, storms and other phenomena. Tokujin Yoshioka explores the potential future of design and how it will incorporate natural principles, effects and by integrating natural science technologies. His installation is similar to looking at or walking through a snowstorm. It is an expanded version of the original ‘snow’ which was exhibited in 1997.

Photos and video: Tokujin Yoshioka | Tokujin Yoshioka inc. website |

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Douglas Gordon | Exhibition | MMK Frankfurt

W&V — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:10:14 +0000

The oeuvre of Scottish conceptual artist Douglas Gordon comprises of films, large video installations, photographs, texts, sculptures and sound installations.
With his analyses of images drawn from the collective memory and everyday culture, Gordon exposes basic patterns of perception. Within this framework, his works often revolve around phenomena of duplication and reflection. Meanings of mirroring and fragmentation are also evoked on a formal level, for example in large scale film and video installations which are presented on two or more screens.

At this moment the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (MMK) is showing a major solo exhibition of the artist titled “Douglas Gordon”. The exhibition shows new pieces and prominent works of the past years and provides a concentrated and impressive overview of this multifaceted artist’s oeuvre. It will run untill the 25th March 2012.

In the below videos the artist and staff of the Museum explain more about the works.

Photos Douglas Gordon and MMK Frankfurt | Video top: Institut für Kunstdokumentation | Video bottom: MMK Frankfurt | MMK website

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Immanuel Kant on thoughts, intuitions and concepts

W&V — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:21:36 +0000

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, researched, lectured and wrote on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment. At the time, there were major successes and advances in the sciences (for example: Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Robert Boyle) using reason and logic. But this stood in sharp contrast to the scepticism and lack of agreement or progress in empiricist philosophy.

Kant’s magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781), aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support what he saw as futile theories, while opposing the scepticism of thinkers such as Descartes, Berkeley and Hume.

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Luc Braquet | Backstage

W&V — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:57:13 +0000

Backstage is a recently shot series by the French photographer Luc Braquet with a strong and interesting documentary quality. Read more about him in an earlier posted article on the Warmenhoven & Venderbos blog and see for the full series his portfolio website.

Photos by Luc Braquet | Luc Braquet portfolio website |

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Skate 1.0 | Conceptual art installation

W&V — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:30:43 +0000

Skate 1.0 is a conceptual sound and light installation by Electroland. Space, movement, context and virtual locations are the key words for this interesting installation. Skate 1.0 puts the viewer into an abstract virtual skateboard park. Skater sounds travel above, below, around and through the viewers and serve as a kind of portal for them. The sounds are a recognisable and approachable door for the audience, a door through which they can travel into the abstract conceptual layers of this work. The light links to both sides. It registers the virtual movement of the skaters and at the same time pushes the viewer beyond.

Videos and Photos by: Electroland | Electroland website

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Tsang Kin-wah | The Seven Seals

W&V — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:02 +0000

“The Seven Seals” is a work by Chinese contemporary artist Tsang Kin-Wah. It is a fascinating ongoing series of seven conceptual digital video art installations using texts and computer technology to show Tsang’s thoughts on various issues of the day. “The Seven Seals” draws its reference from various sources such as: existentialism, metaphysics and politics. With this work Tsang Kin-wah attempt to articulate the complex situation of the world and the dilemmas that people are facing while approaching “the end of the world”.

Animated phrases and short sentences appear, move and float, sometimes, like a murmur and sometimes like an admonition that reveals the nature of human beings and the changes of our emotions. Without a clear beginning or end, each installation in the “The Seven Seals” creates different cycles of text on continuous loops that appear to repeat without end; echoing the concept of “eternal recurrence” whereby all the issues and dilemmas of daily existence are seen perpetually recurring for an infinite number of fleeting instances, even though we recognize and are aware of them for a longer time.

Photos and videos from the The Fifth Seal installation which is part of the Seven Seals project.

Videos and Photos by: Tsang Kin-wah | Tsang Kin-wah website | Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

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