Damien & The Love Guru

Exhibition views

Mickael Marman 
‘Gemælde’
12. January – 19. February 2023
Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo

Exhibition view 

Exhibition view 

Exhibition view 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 43 x 68 cm / 16.93 x 26.77 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 77 x 73 cm / 30.31 x 28.74 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 45 x 38 cm / 17.72 x 14.96 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 60 x 51 cm / 23.62 x 20.08 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 44 x 37 cm / 17.32 x 14.57 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 41 x 35 cm / 16.14 x 13.78 in 

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 41 x 36 cm / 16.41 x 14.17 in

Mickael Marman, Untitled, 2023, mixed media, 42 x 36 cm / 16.54 x 14.17 in
 

What do you get when you get a tote bag?
 

Tote bags are what, in psychoanalytic terms, we might call overdetermined, that is, caused by multiple factors, both trivial and potent. But where dreams, as were Freud’s concern, are private and often elude memory, tote bags achieve their special significance precisely from being excessively public, at once sign and signification, container and contained. This does not mean that we are able to control what they say about us anymore than we are able to control our dreams. Is it possible to bring a bag to the supermarket without revealing your personal punctum? Is there such a thing as a blank canvas? No and no.
 

While on a trip to the Atlantic coast of Morocco – long a destination for artists – Mickael Marman discovered that the local tote bag craze was for provincial German motifs: a Rheinland Sparkasse; an apothecary in a village on the border between Hessen and Thuringia; a marathon in Kassel. Quite sophisticated, I should say. Marman became interested in the strange presence of these bags in this unlikely location and began to rummage through secondhand shops looking for them. There, he might catch the eye of a fellow tote scavenger. Would they have to compete for the same bag? The shop keeper would also start to grow suspicious. What did these people, so hungrily digging through the piles, see in the tote bags that the shopkeeper did not? And what, then, should be their price?

We could say that tote bags speak by a meme-logic, coded and contextual; what a given bag means in one place and time will quickly slip and become unreadable in another. For art lovers, for instance, a Tate tote would defeat the purpose – too obvious – but on the right person, say, someone studying in the class of Michael Krebber, a Mona Lisa or Monet tote could actually be just right. This would be a typical post-tote position.

The logic is familiar to us from paintings. For much of art history, it would be necessary to know this or that biblical story or ancient myth, as well as how they had been previously interpreted in art, in order to read a painting. Now, in a certain corner of the German art world especially, the references that must be decoded are subtle nudges between professors and their students and former assistants. Every decision, especially those made not to do something, is pregnant with meaning. The fact that few people can read them is both what makes them so intriguing and their system of signification so claustrophobic.
 

One wishes one didn’t have to carry a tote bag, as, with Sartre, one might wish for the existence of a plant. But – God damn it – how do you do without? This question is related to that asked by many artists of how to do without painting. How nice it would be to come up with something fresher, less laden with signification, convoluted to the point of banality. Marman’s tote bag paintings are full of those questions, and even take a stab at coming up with an earnest answer to them.

And so what does oil on canvas mean when it is oil on canvas bag and the bag went from Germany to Morocco and back again? It is a story about de- and re-valuation; the hopes and promises issued by objects, and the systems of meaning by which they travel – though, crucially, the bags do not get to hang there in authentic plainness and speak to their journey around the world in a blunt yet vague gesture at capitalism, globalization, the environment, or worse: the anthropocene. Rather, they are paintings like all other paintings, their origins obfuscated, their chance of beauty impaired though not entirely ruled out. We might see in them a starry sky, an unruly sea, or a reference to actionism. The accumulated layers of color and material exacerbate overdetermination to the point that the battered bags become more presence than sign, less about selfhood than existence. Marman just keeps on painting. Who would have thought that painting’s problem could also be its solution?
 

There was reason and profound impulse behind that first tote bag you chose to drape over your shoulder. You wanted something from it; it meant something. And it is in the moment when you remember what that was that the meme-logic is suspended and another kind of mattering kicks into effect. Marman’s paintings, too, work in this way: to elevate, condense and hold still, if only for a moment, inside that square of tote, whatever it was you wanted, as if to say: it is still there, come get it.

⏤ Kristian Vistrup Madsen

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CURRENTLY

Jared Madere & Mathias Toubro
Floor Pal V
21. January – 1. April 2023
Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

Alison Yip & Tiziana La Melia
‘confessions on sparkling hill’
4. February – 13. May 2023
Damien & The Love Guru, Zürich

Stage pour enfants : Archives Fictives

Du lundi 20 février au vendredi 24 février, nous organisons un stage pour les enfants de 8 à 12 ans, animé par Eric Chagnon de l’asbl La Boîte à Clous. Au programme : création d’un fanzine autour du thème de la mémoire et de sa / ses traces. Glanage, photo, découpage, collage, reliure, écriture et impressions à la main.  

En pratique : 9h00 → 16h00 (garderie 8h30 → 16h45) – 110€ (10€ de réduction pour les frères et sœurs) - Infos : 

Damien & The Love Guru

graphic design invite by Atelier Brenda

Alison Yip & Tiziana La Melia
‘confessions on sparkling hill’

Opening Friday February 3rd 2023
6-9pm
Damien & The Love Guru 
Zürich
 

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CURRENTLY

Jared Madere & Mathias Toubro
Floor Pal V
20. January – 1. April 2023
Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

28/01 – 11/03
Manon de Boer
Passage for Persona
Opening tomorrow, 3 – 7 pm

Persona by Manon de Boer and Latifa Laâbissi turns a cinematic gaze on Écran Somnambule (2012), a performance by Laâbissi, that is in turn based on the film Mary Wigman tanzt (1930), an excerpt of her Hexentanz (1926). In the artists’ film, a physical experience of the disruptive power of the masked figure is conveyed in a circumscribing camera movement. For the exhibition at the gallery Manon de Boer created a second work, Passage for Persona, a site-specific installation in collaboration with wang consulting.

Manon de Boer and Latifa Laâbissi, Persona, 2022
Conception and design of the figure Nadia Lauro (2012); Cinematography Léo Lefèvre; Camera assistant Alexandre Cabanne; Grip Corentin Geisen; Light Thomas Bojan & Ludovic Rivière; Sound recording, editing & mixing Laszlo Umbreit; Editing Manon de Boer; Grading Paul Millot at Cobalt; Produced by Auguste Orts & Figure Project; Supported by Flanders Audiovisual Fund & arts center BUDA

On the occasion of the opening of her exhibition, the edition Cast by Manon de Boer, produced for Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle, BE) and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (CH) will be presented and available for purchase at the gallery.

The Newspaper no. 135 is now online.

NOCTURNE 

KETS

& MORE

Damien & The Love Guru

 Sharon Van Overmeiren
‘A Topological Boulevard’

Opening Saturday 28th January 2023
12 – 6 pm
Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
invites Museum Plantin-Moretus
please reserve here for the opening  

This exhibition displays works from the Museum Plantin-Moretus, which houses a renowned collection of drawings, prints, and books. Artist Sharon Van Overmeiren (Antwerp, 1985) made the selection. In her sculptures, Van Overmeiren unites existing forms drawn from a variety of objects. She follows her own intuition in doing so, associating shapes in a spirit of freedom. Where, when, and by whom the source material was made is irrelevant. Ancient artefacts and pop-culture figures become equals. Van Overmeiren wants to make connections without hierarchies. A Topological Boulevard is inspired by the same logic. Works made in different periods are presented diachronically. There are no labels, collapsing divides between famous artists and anonymous craftsmen. This allows Van Overmeiren to make new connections based on shapes, uniting works in eleven unexpected ensembles. Each group is named after a typeface in a nod to the printer Christophe Plantin. Individual pieces become part of something larger, like letters in an alphabet. These new
unions trigger a fresh perspective.

The exhibition was realized by Sharon Van Overmeiren in close collaboration with the teams of Museum Plantin-Moretus and KMSKA. Concept & text: Sharon Van Overmeiren and Koen Bulckens. Graphic design & scenography: Atelier Brenda and Sharon Van Overmeiren. With sincere thanks to the lenders, Museum Plantin-Moretus and the King Baudouin Foundation.

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CURRENTLY

Jared Madere & Mathias Toubro
Floor Pal V
 3. February – 1. April 2023
Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

UPCOMING 

Alison Yip and Tiziana La Melia 
confessions on sparkling hill
Opening Friday 3. February 2023
Damien & The Love Guru, Zürich

28/01 – 11/03
Manon de Boer
Passage for Persona
Opening: 28/01, 3 – 7 pm

Persona by Manon de Boer and Latifa Laâbissi turns a cinematic gaze on Écran Somnambule (2012), a performance by Laâbissi, that is in turn based on the film Mary Wigman tanzt (1930), an excerpt of her Hexentanz (1926). In the artists’ film, a physical experience of the disruptive power of the masked figure is conveyed in a circumscribing camera movement. For the exhibition at the gallery Manon de Boer created a second work, Passage for Persona, a site-specific installation in collaboration with wang consulting.

Manon de Boer and Latifa Laâbissi, Persona, 2022
Conception and design of the figure Nadia Lauro (2012); Cinematography Léo Lefèvre; Camera assistant Alexandre Cabanne; Grip Corentin Geisen; Light Thomas Bojan & Ludovic Rivière; Sound recording, editing & mixing Laszlo Umbreit; Editing Manon de Boer; Grading Paul Millot at Cobalt; Produced by Auguste Orts & Figure Project; Supported by Flanders Audiovisual Fund & arts centre BUDA

On the occasion of the opening of her exhibition, the edition Cast by Manon de Boer, produced for Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Deurle, BE) and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (CH) will be presented and available for purchase at the gallery.