Levy Delval

Comic Relief @ Levy Delval (2015) exhibition photos

4 January 2016

The Comic Relief group exhibition was on at Brussels’ Levy Delval, running June 4 to July 4, 2015. Each artist, Nel Aerts, Bending Binding, Liz Craft, Rafael Delacruz, Emily Mae Smith, and Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx among them, contributed at least one item to the space, which was filled mostly with objects and drawings.

The accompanying text, written by New York-based artist and contributor, Quintessa Matranga presents itself like the artworks in the show do when scrolling through the documentation photographs on Levy Delval’s website. They are connected and have relationships to the former and the follower but are also self-contained, and determined imagination-fragments, a bit like when you’re slightly tipsy and your senses are seriously focussed.

Nel Aerts, 'So long, farewell...' (2013) Install view. Courtesy Levy. Delval, Brussels.
Nel Aerts, ‘So long, farewell…’ (2013) Install view. Courtesy Levy. Delval, Brussels.

“this
is what
I do
for fun”

is one small text block. Another phrase, “Anonymous actor” is repeated, and so is the word “messy” in another itemised thought. The works have a kind of perfection to their curious existence that is difficult and also unnecessary to interpret. ‘Condom filled with spaghetti’ (2015), an “open edition” by Puppies Puppies ends up with really elegant swirls as though it’s a decorative surface pattern on the outside of something solid all the way through. Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx’s piece, ‘Personal Footprint’ (2015) made by arranging his two shoe insoles comes to look like a pair of feet with attitude, or a bird, or a dull butterfly pinned inside a white display box. Left faces right and right faces left.

Some of the items and pictures might have feelings towards each other, for example, arranged is Mantranga’s old white baby’s trainer with a fake big blue eye inserted into its side (‘Parasite 1’), an inkjet drawing and text on the wall above by Rafael Delacruz titled ‘Demonic and Unimaginable Imagination’ and ‘Kooling System (Deeply thinking)’ by Bending Binding. The latter is a tangle of green and blue laces -the tangy, sweet variety -held together by resin and attached to the wall as though supporting something behind it through a straw.

Another Puppies Puppies work is a lemon pie on the floor next to a blue poncho and yellow towel lined up, ready for the pie. Ken Kagami has installed a plastic ‘Tissue’ on a canvas plinth. You imagine tears sliding off the plastic. This is not yet another plastic sculpture, it’s to do with the tears. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

Comic Relief was on at Brussels’ LEVY.DELVAL from June 4 to July 4, 2015.

Header image: Ken Kagami, ‘Ellsworth Kelly’s Underpants’ (2015) Install view. Courtesy Levy. Delval, Brussels.

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Brian Khek @ Levy Delval, Jun 4 – Jul 4

3 June 2015

Brian Khek opens up a new solo show called Harmonizing with Exhaustion at Brussels’s Levy Delval, running from June 4 to July 4.

The Chicago-born (and based) artist has a history with consumerism. His work has repeatedly exploited and exposed the consumer cultures that surround him, participating in the 89+ panel ‘Branding’ and contributing works to shows with titles like Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship and Personal Belongings.

For his latest show at Levy Deval, Khek presents a press release in the form of a travelogue, with a paragraph introducing the itinerary. Perhaps the materials mentioned—a blue pen, xeroxed essays, 13¢, iron—hint to the materials that we will see in the Khek’s show; he has a way of including the unusual (rotting bananas, anyone) in this installations. Then again, maybe not.

See the exhibition page for details. **

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Adam Cruces + Soul Hackers @ Levy Delval, Mar 19 – Apr 18

17 March 2015

Artist Adam Cruces is opening up a new solo show called Sift running alongside the Kate Steciw and Yannick Val Gesto collaborative show Soul Hackers at Levy Delval from March 19 to April 18.

American-born, Paris-based Cruces takes up the Belgian gallery’s project room for Sift, his eleventh solo show, and gives little away as to its nature other than a press release that comes in the form of ten random T/F statements, presenting maybe-facts like “All water on Earth originated purely from comets. T/F” and “Frank Mars, who created the Snickers chocolate bar in 1930, named the candy after his favorite horse. T/F”. The last statement merely reads: “This statement is not true. T/F”.

In the gallery’s main room is the joint Soul Hackers show. Steciw has made regular use of stock photographers from ShutterStock since 2010, like her in joint show with de Joode at Neumeister Bar-Am (NBA), describing her fascination with “authorless” images, and with the notion of invisible aesthetic labour. Val Gesto, on the other hand, credits his inspiration to the DeviantArt aesthetic, to recreate the types of fan art and “meme-imagery” he found on image boards and forums.

See the Sift and the Soul Hackers exhibition pages for details. **

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