Wiels, Brussels
17 February – 13 August 2023

We are at a party. Or perhaps its aftermath. There is no one around. A disco ball hangs from the ceiling and, struck by coloured lights, projects flecks across the walls. The same lights produce glowing puddles on the floor, in and around which are housed dozens of objects. There are several cameras, many flower vases and burning candles. A Pierrot hat and a fox mask are bathed in red light. A miniature bicycle stands nearby. A scattering of images include pictures of John Lennon, Vladimir Lenin and Marilyn Monroe, as imagined by Andy Warhol. Janis Joplin, the Doors and the Rolling Stones play on the stereo. It is as if everyone left the party sometime around 1970 but it kept going.

This is Celebration? Realife Revisited (1972-2000), an installation by the London-based artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz (b1947). It was first exhibited at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 1972, before being packed in boxes under the artist’s bed for decades. It currently forms the first section of Nuit Américaine, Chaimowicz’s retrospective in three works at Wiels, Brussels’ Centre for Contemporary Art. The nuit américaine is a cinematic technique in which black backgrounds and interior lights are deployed to create the illusion of shooting at nighttime. Here, it becomes a metaphor for seeing life through the lens of art.

Chaimowicz has been blurring life and art for decades. His own identity is itself a blur. He was born in postwar Paris to a French mother and a Polish Jewish father. His family moved to Britain when he was eight, and he has lived in London ever since. He started off studying painting at the Slade, but he had a Damascene moment after travelling to Paris to take part in the May 1968 student protests. On his return, he burned all his paintings and began again, embarking on a trailblazing artistic project that has grown to encompass performance, installation and the decorative arts.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.