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BOOOOOOOM – “Revenants” Featuring Artists Kelly Richardson, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva

Kelly Richardson, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick SIlva

BOOOOOOOM

at Rectangle, Brussels

A new exhibition featuring Canadian artist Kelly Richardson, Franco-Canadian artist Nicolas Sassoon and Brazilian-American artist Rick Silva. Curated by Brussels-based art space Rectangle, “Revenants” plays with ideas of scale and time as it relates to human perception and our place on this planet. Sassoon’s ongoing sculpture series, “Prophets,” combines volcanic rock with LCD panels featuring pixelated animations reminiscent of flowing lava. Recalling traditional viewing stones, from which electronic hardware and screens emerge to form heads and figures, the sculptures recount a partial history of our relationship with matter and reminds us, not just of how the very ground beneath our feet was formed, but where the same minerals that enable our digital lives originate. Sassoon and Silva’s collaborative project similarly speaks to the connections between organic and inorganic materials as they share a common interest in depictions of wilderness and natural forms through computer imaging. “CORES” is made up of high-resolution 3D renderings of geological specimens altered by unnatural substances and enigmatic structures.

On the other end of the planetary spectrum, Richardson takes us into the asteroid belt of our solar system. Continuing ideas explored in “Pillars of Dawn” where extinct species in a seemingly post-human world have taken the form of crystals, “Origin Stories” reveals the majesty and infinite wealth of our home within the context of the universe. However intensely inward (historical / geological) or outward (celestial / futuristic) these artists may be looking, all the pieces in “Revenants” seem to come back to the same thing — what role or responsibility we still have yet to play. As Alexandra Crouwers states in her essay on the show:

“When we return to the human power of one, we’re left with the realisation that while our species’ behaviour is responsible for the current global extinction event, it’s equally capable of producing uniquely imaginative visions. Art alone can’t save the world but the creation of art may very well be considered as the yin to our destructive yang.”

Check out more images from “Revenants” below or on display at Rectangle in Brussels until February 20th.

 

“Revenants” Featuring Artists Kelly Richardson, Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva

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Hearts and Minds – Catalog Launch

Catalog Launch

Hearts and Minds

30 July 2021
at Rectangle, Brussels

Chantal Akerman
Harold Ancart
Jef Geys
Dan Graham
Bodys Isek Kingelez
Robert Lebeck
An-My Lê
Otobong Nkanga
Marina Pinsky
Claudia Peña Salinas
Adam Simon
Momoyo Torimitsu
Hil Ye

Rectangle is thrilled to invite you to the catalog launch of the group show
 Hearts and Minds,
a joint project of carriage trade / Rectangle

We’d like to thank all the artists and the following lenders for their loans of artwork for the exhibition:

Icarus Films (Chantal Akerman), Clearing Gallery, Brooklyn (Harold Ancart), Essex Street/Maxwell Graham (Jef Geys), Greene Naftali Gallery (Dan Graham), Ronald Guttman / Christine Martin, Frédéric de Goldschmidt / André Magnin (Bodys Isek Kingelez), Janice Guy (An-My Lê), Cordula Lebeck, Archiv Robert Lebeck (Robert Lebeck), Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam (Otobong Nkanga), C L E A R I N G, Brussels (Marina Pinsky), and AfricaMuseum (Royal Museum for Central Africa).

A special thanks to Lawrence B. Benenson, LMCC, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Mr. Jacques Louise Vidal, WBI (Wallonie-Bruxelles International) and FWB (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles) for their generous support. Thanks also to gallery assistants Jervey Inglesby, Laura Li, Molly Miller, Hannah Park, Kristal Uribe, as well as Daylon Orr, for all their efforts on the exhibition.

With the gracious support of

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Revealing the Prickly Side of Imperial “Soft Power” – Hyperallergic

Revealing the Prickly Side of Imperial “Soft Power”
by Billy Anania
Hyperallergic

Otobong Nkanga, "Alterscape Playground (E)" (2005-2015), C-print on aluminium, 19 7/10 × 26 2/5 inches (courtesy the artist and Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam)
Otobong Nkanga, "Alterscape Playground (E)" (2005-2015), C-print on aluminium, 19 7/10 × 26 2/5 inches (courtesy the artist and Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam)

A collaboration between Carriage Trade and Rectangle, Hearts and Minds analyzes the deceptive repackaging of Western imperialism.

At its core, colonialism is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. The colonized subject becomes an object of state terror while historically, government agencies and the media have repackaged these imperial projects as “foreign aid,” giving way to more indirect neocolonial endeavors. Back home, the rhetoric remains the same; politicians’ fiery speeches continue to convince their domestic population that intervention abroad is in their best interest.

Public relations campaigns do much of the heavy lifting in manufacturing deceptive appeals to “peace” and “democracy,” and otherwise misleading through psychological operations (or psyops). During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson told wealthy business owners that “the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there,” as part of a counterrevolutionary strategy to suppress the Viet Minh army. He used the phrase “winning hearts and minds” in 28 public statements to sell the war.

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Hearts and Minds – The Manhattan Art Review

The Manhattan Art Review

Hearts and Minds

Chantal Akerman, Harold Ancart, Jef Geys, Dan Graham, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robert Lebeck, An-My Lê, Otobong Nkanga, Marina Pinsky, Claudia Peña Salinas, Adam Simon, Momoyo Torimitsu, Hil Yeh – Hearts and Minds – Carriage Trade – ****.5
Speaking of art doing something, this show is a great example in that it’s one of the exceedingly rare examples of a good political art show. This is materialist/documentary/archival as opposed to ideological/dogmatic, oriented towards showing the world as it is in a way that leads one to identify injustice and formulate an ideological perspective instead of presenting a predetermined value judgment on a silver platter. Control, propaganda, plants, sex, media, administration, rebellion, architecture, these are simply facts of our existence that must be made sense of in some way to make life navigable. The fact of the matter, though, is that life is simply unnavigable for many due to these forces conspiring to deceive and maintain their opacity to the general public. 

[…]

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Hearts and Minds – THEGUIDE.ART

Extract of THEGUIDE.ART. Image credit: Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G Gallery.
Extract of THEGUIDE.ART. Image credit: Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G Gallery.

THEGUIDE.ART

Hearts and Minds

It was George Orwell who coined “doublethink,” the dangerous capacity of the citizenry to hold contradictory or morally wrong beliefs as a result of political indoctrination—but its terrifying instantiation comes from history, not fiction. “Hearts and Minds,” at carriage trade, a joint project with the Brussels-based gallery Rectangle, draws its name from a Lyndon B. Johnson quote: a war, he suggests, is won not by artillery but by psychology, a so-called hearts-and-mind warfare. Johnson could not win his war, even on its home front: the conflict in Vietnam would come to be seen as a wholly failed endeavor.

[…]

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NADA Member

NADA

new membership!

We are pleased to announce that Rectangle has been welcomed as a new member of the NADA!

The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is the definitive non-profit arts organization dedicated to the cultivation, support, and advancement of new voices in contemporary art. more info.

List of new members:

1969 Gallery – New York
Nir Altman – Munich
CARVALHO PARK – New York
Fragment Gallery – Moscow
Ginsberg – Lima
Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects – New York
High Gallery – Warsaw
The Hole – New York
Hunter Shaw Fine Art – Los Angeles
in lieu – Los Angeles
Kapp Kapp – Philadelphia / New York
LETO – Warsaw
Mixer – Istanbul
Mother Gallery – Beacon, NY
NIAD Art Center – Richmond, CA
Project Pangée – Montreal
PROXYCO – New York
Rectangle – Brussels, Belgium
Stoneleaf Retreat – Kingston, NY
Ulterior Gallery – New York
Y2K group – New York

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L’art même n°81

Edited by Jean-Baptiste Carobolante

download pdf

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Hart

Edited by Sam Steverlynck & Pieter Vermeulen
hart-magazine.be