Sergey Bratkov, Love Me, 1997, 74 x 65 cm, lambda photo ed 3/5

Spin Doctor, curated by Johan Creten

This year, visual artist Johan Creten will curate the booth of Transit gallery at Art Brussels 2014. With the Spin Doctor project, he brings to the fore a selection of the gallery’s “own” artists, both from Belgium and abroad. Transit has, since its inception twenty-five years ago, been acting in a pioneering role, spearheading the introduction of artists such as, among others, Thomas Huber, Virginie Bailly, Luc Dondeyne, Michael Sailstorfer and obviously Johan Creten as well. Today, the gallery still sets out to find ground-breaking art in Belgium; a quest that is also taken far beyond the national borders. Johan Creten’s selection in this way perfectly illustrates the international approach of the gallery and shows how Transit has established lasting relationships with artists from places as diverse as Russia (Sergey Bratkov), Palestine (Yazan Khalili), Morocco (Mehdi-Georges Lahlou), Australia (Jenny Watson) and Ukraine (Nikita Kadan). Often, these are artists who create work with a strong political and social dimension; engaged activists whose work evinces a strong focus on minorities and integration. All these aspects form a common thread throughout the Spin Doctor exhibition.

With Virginie Bailly, Sergey Bratkov, Luc Dondeyne, Thomas Huber, Yazan Khalili, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Michael Sailstorfer, Jenny Watson.
Design furniture: Stijn Guilielmus Ruys

Nikita Kadan, Sun Grid, 2013, slideshow, fragment

Engineering Hope, solo show Nikita Kadan

The exhibition combines two works.

The first work “Barricade” (2013-2014) – is a series of watercolors with variations on a motive of barricade constructions. Barricades became the key image of protests in Kiev and are already the common part of the city centre, they represent the very idea of the ideological eclecticism of the Ukrainian uprising of 2013-2014.
This eclecticism is actualized by the figure of a mighty enemy which keeps incompatible elements together. Euro-enthusiasm, civic and ethnic nationalisms, religious conservatism and the idea of progress through overcoming post-soviet inertia, vertical control and ‘organic democracy’ can co-exist while external danger is on the horizon. The New Ukrainian hope is constructed from found materials in extreme circumstances, having spontaneous ‘anarchitectural’ character, but also a big mobility of elements and potential of transformation.

In the second series “Private suns” (2013) appears the standard Soviet ‘sun grid’ as the main hero. This grid is still actively present in post-socialist city environment. The form of this grid represents both oppression as dream, poor everyday life as utopian horizon. The big narrative with its figure of ‘common’ hope is replaced by multiplicity of personal and collective intentions, forming new and new unstable and fluid alliances.

Schilderkunstig oeuvre ontstaat vaak vanuit een zekere vorm van contaminatie.

Een eerste voorbeeld is een vorm van ‘intellectuele contaminatie’, gaande van alles dat het subject beïnvloedt om tot een bepaalde vorm te komen, daar inhoud aan te geven, en die vorm te behouden.

Een tweede vorm van ‘fysieke contaminatie’, vertrekkende vanuit het handelen met verf, heeft te maken heeft met de fysieke eigenschappen van het medium.

Het is belangrijk dat deze twee vormen onlosmakelijk met elkaar verweven zijn.  De tekens die zich binnen de interne logica van één werk manifesteren worden in de samenkomst van verschillende werken aangevuld en dragen bij aan het ontstaan van een nieuw geheel.

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