In a series of works on paper based on his 2016 video work, The Pure Necessity, David Claerbout recontextualises characters from The Jungle Book. The video – crafted from painstaking, hand-rendered replicas of frames from the original movie – reimagines the Disney classic as a narrative-free animation, in which each character is discharged of their anthropomorphic traits.
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys’ collaborative works on paper are loosely-drawn caricatures, presented alongside deadpan titles. Paris in the Rain, 2015, for example, riffs on Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. It is recognisable, a copy, but its off-kilter realism catches the viewer off guard, something that is explored further in their uncanny sculpture.
Ann Veronica Janssens’ immersive practice also explores the experience of reality, albeit from a sensory approach. Her minimalist aesthetic makes way for her viewers’ cognitive response, making use of light, colour and reflection in her bid to reveal the instability of time and space. Blue Glass Roll 405/2, 2019 – recently included in her solo exhibition at the South London Gallery – is a circular, donut-shaped sculpture made from glass of such a density that it appears to be blue rather than transparent.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, artists are concerned with notions of authorship. In a series of works consisting of copper sheets mounted on wooden supports, François Curlet plays with the concept of the readymade. These minimal compositions appear manufactured but on closer inspection reveal signs of their maker’s intervention.
Daan Van Golden’s Untitled (Tokyo), 1964, explores the intersection of handmade and mechanical production methods. The painting belongs to a group of around twenty works made by the artist during a two year-long stay in Japan, in which he meticulously reproduced on canvas motifs found on wrapping paper and paper handkerchiefs.
