SALON D'ANVERS
(Christine Clinckx invites)
Annefloor Arsonne, Stef Kamil Carlens, Christine Clinckx,
Juliet Jespers, Leon Jespers, Rudy Trouvé
10.11 - 21.12.2024
Festive opening: Sunday 10 November, 3 - 7pm
Impro concert by Leon Jespers, Arthur Pas and Rudy Trouvé
About the exhibition
Salon d'Anvers is a group exhibition featuring works by Annefloor Arsonne, Stef Kamil Carlens, Christine Clinckx, Juliet Jespers, Leon Jespers, Rudy Trouvé.
Christine Clinckx invited five guest artists, all have a connection to Antwerp. The exhibition is a meeting of generations and their works, which combined becomes an artistic biotope, from floor to ceiling.
Salon d'Anvers refers with a wink to the Salon for painting and sculpture between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The first Salon d'Anvers took place in 1789, the last one in 1926. These 'public' art exhibitions had a strong influence on the arts. The most famous was the Salon de Paris. Similar sales exhibitions were also organized in other places and countries. Antwerp was the first city in Belgium - then included in the Austrian Netherlands - to create a Painting and Sculpture Salon. Slowly adapting to new artistic trends, the triennial Salon joined the competition of the Art Nouveau circle from 1920.
The Salons had an enormous impact on art life. New trends had virtually no chance. In 1863 the first 'Salon des Refusés' took place in Paris, an exhibition of rejected works of art, and later the 'salon des indépendants', which had a more private character. The latter serves as an example of the association of artists, which occurred throughout Europe around 1900.
Slowly adapting to new artistic trends, the triennial Salon in Antwerp joined the competition of the Art Nouveau circle from 1920. This development is the beginning of strong differentiation in the arts.
About the artists
Annefloor Arsonne graduated in 2023 as a Master in sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. She lives and works in Antwerp. With a black sense of humor, she waltzes through the traditions of art history. Paint on wood becomes three dimensional. Fascinated by sound and motion Arsonne places aesthetics in relation to mechatronics. The shooting booth at the fair, the ice cream figures on sticks... her works reflect a cheerful nostaligia and enter into a dialogue with the viewer
A sensation that can only be envisioned as one marching with playful seriousness through the mud of history in a marching band uniform. proudly raising a fist in the air.
Stef Kamil Carlens is a multi-disciplinary artist. He is a singer-song writer, musician, composer and music producer and visual artist. He became known in the 90s and after dEUS as a bassist and singer. Since 1996 he has been the driving force behind the art collective and music band Zita Swoon.
His visual work shows colorful worlds that unite the uninhibited and the melancholic.
For the Salon d'Anvers exhibition he shows a new series of drawings and sculptures. Meticulously drawn and colourful figures refer to a world of cheerfully dancing shamans. In Carlens' almost iconic sculptures, colorful animals refer to a world in our collective memory, looking forward and not to forget.
Christine Clinckx ( °1969 (B), lives and works in Antwerp) Multimedia artist, performer and activist Christine Clinckx combines actuality and history in her installations, paintings, objects and photographic work. The works are part of an ongoing project based on a combination of found landscape photographs, family pictures and imaginary (self-)portraits. By cutting these images up and then manipulating them, their original meaning and function are disturbed and transformed, with ghost-like figures haunting landscapes of the past.
Christine Clinckx studied at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts Antwerp (1989 - 1992) Since then her work was on view in numerous exhibitions national and international. Works are in public and private collections
Juliet Jespers (° 2002, works and lives in Antwerp) obtained her Masters in painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp this year. Her oil paintings reflect a fresh look at the traditions of painting, they radiate the energy and dynamism of the Cobra movement and the raw authenticity of outsider art.
Collecting, preserving and releasing played an important role in her artistic evolution from figurative to abstract. Jespers' works on canvas touch on the elusive, the untold. Her work does not leave the viewer unmoved and shows a lively rhythm imbued with a naivety that resonates on a profound level.
Leon Jespers, musician and visual artist, graduated in 2023 as Master in graphics, KASK, Ghent. His drawings and paintings refer to the visual language of mass culture. Jespers often works in series that start from a specific subject or line. This rational approach goes hand in hand with naive surprise. His work itself contains ridicule, in addition to a healthy humorous criticism of contemporary society. Leon Jespers obtained his Master's degree in graphics from KASK Ghent in 2023. His work has already been shown in the group exhibitions Graduation Show 2023 by KASK Ghent, 'Vruchtbare Grond' in Het Bos Antwerpen (2024), 'Tegenlezen' in De Slegte Ghent (2024) and his solo exhibition 'In the loop' in Lochness in Ghent (2023). He also produces publications, a.o.: DRILL!’ ed. Ant Mag (2023) en ‘Let’s Dance' own ed. (2023) and 'Liefde op twee wielen' ed. Zwarte Pagina (2024)
Painter and musician Rudy Trouvé (°1967, lives and works in Antwerp) graduated in 1990 from the KASK, Ghent animation film with the late Raoul Servais. His figurative paintings refer to that animated film, they are blow-ups from a broader story.
Music and painting go together for Trouvé. His visual work is about the “glamour of the depression” in cheerful colours. Some also appear on the covers of his own record label 'Heaven's Hotel'. Trouvé's visual language bears the influences of his youth: old film posters from the 1970s and the covers of pulp books from the 1960s; images that suggest a story. Allusions to Egon Shiele, Hugo Pratt and Andy Warhol are never far away.
All this in an intense immersion of storytelling and colour. In collaboration with Bernaerts Gallery
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