Dilum Coppens: S.o.t.D.P. at K.L.8 exhibition space, June 3, 2023

 S.o.t.D.P.

OPENING 3 JUNE 2023, 18h

OPEN 4, 10 & 11 June 2023, 13h - 18h

Over the past two years, Dilum Coppens retreated to his studio and desublimed the different aspects of his artistic practice. “S.o.t.D.P.” is the result of this reflective period, an exhibition that combines paintings, sculpture, video, and a new experiment with virtual reality into a comprehensive installation.

To shape his research, he returned to the idea of an artefact: a historical object with a mystical or unknown meaning. This time he focused specifically on religious artefacts and the way they give an aura to prophets and the beliefs they give shape to.

“S.o.t.D.P.” visualizes the history and legacy of a fictitious prophet. Structured like a fragmentary vision, the works mimic the mysterious and equivocal cluster of meaning that archaeological artefacts and religious imagery contain. Dilum acts like an oracle delivering a message and failing to reach a coherent conclusion, and instead lapsing into a strange phase transition of narrative elements. The use of different media within this project reinforces the collage elements present in the individual works, connecting form and content. They are structured as visual riddles, laden with a playful mysticism, becoming a line of transmission for a meaning that the artist doesn’t quite grasp himself.

 

Dilum has always been an avid fan of fantasy novels and games. Both these cultural forms are heavily indebted to mythology and how it constructs meaning through narrative. Our ancestors created myths to explain the inexplicable and indeterminate world they were surrounded by. In that sense myths, games, fantasy novels and films offer a kind of escapism, by teasing out a sense of wonder that has largely been lost in our contemporary understanding of the world. Yet this sense of wonder still manifests itself in the gap that continues to exist between mystery and definition, between definite knowledge and bewilderment, and allows us a certain freedom. Coppens tries to recreate this sense of indeterminacy in his works, creating an archaeology of our own age.

Marx referred to religion as opium for the people, and perhaps myths used to serve the same purpose. The instability and inadequacy of meaning as a concept is expressed visually by this disjointed mixture of different media. Consequently, it shows the futility of this human attempt to impose something comforting on the bewildering world around us. Meaning is unreliable in the end. It is the stories human beings cannot help but invent: are they in any way helpful other than in the sense that an illusion is helpful and meaningful as some sort of opium?. Text from: K.L.8

WORTH MORE/WORTH LESS at K.L.8, Brussels 25.03.2023

For this group exhibition, we will show artists whose work reflects on the concept of ‘value’ in art. In what sense can you say that an artwork possesses worth? And does this need to be limited to monetary and material value, or can art have other kinds of value, such as social value, spiritual value, emotional value, ...?

Participating arists: Andrea Balladelli, Chris Dennis, Daniëlle Raspé, Giovanni Casu, JaZoN Frings, jo+kapi, Jorden Boulet, Lea & Adrian, Maria Konschake, Nathaniel Trost, Obed Vleugels, Pancho Westendarp, Rabten Tenzin, Ringo Lisko, Simone Marconi & Yique

KL8

Avant la Lettre. Vernissage at K.L.8, Brussels 29.10.22

Avant la lettre

OPENING: 29 October 2022, 18h

Open 30 October, 1, 4, 5, 6 November 2022, 13h - 18h

From press release: Written Word and Image: these are two fundamental components of the known history of art. Both possess different powers, connotations, impediments, advantages, and have different ways of establishing meaning. Whenever they are brought together in a work of art, tension is inevitable, and throughout various cultures their relationship has taken on surprising shapes.

 

For our newest exhibition, Avant la lettre, we will show the work of 19 artists who incorporate (hand)writing / type / text into their practice, and who explore the interaction between the written word and visual art.

 

The Image came first, without a doubt. Our ancestors left paintings on cave walls, carved animal bone into effigies, thousands of years before the invention of the first writing systems. But writing got the upper hand, myths and holy Scripture came to determine how human beings related to their surroundings and to each other. We explored the world and aimed to capture all of creation in taxonomies, botanical treatises, laws of physics. Only the supposed truth was ever written down.

 

In the Modern age however, the power balance started to shift. The written word no longer maintained its precedence over other modes of representation, and the author (who was of course white and male) was  no longer accepted as the all-determining voice, whether in academia, film or journalism. Now, under the aegis of new media like television and the internet, the Image appears to have emancipated itself, and has gained an unprecedented ubiquity in all parts of the cultural landscape.

 

None of us have been taught as children how to interpret images, but reading and writing on the other hand are acquired skills. Does this mean that looking at a painting requires more spontaneity? Is reading more challenging? Can written words offer more meaning than images? We are curious what associations or prejudices contemporary artists have about these two extraordinary human devices. What are their respective powers and shortcomings? And what processes are set in motion when the two are combined into one single piece of art?

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With works by Algolit, Andrey Rylov and Maxim Mezentsev, Ash Bowland, Christina Mitrentse, Christine van Poucke, Daniel Arthuus, Daniëlle Raspé, Éanna Mac Cana, Gabriel René Franjou, Hyunbok Lee, Jing Wang, Laurence Petrone, Laurent Fiorentino, Leda Woloshyn, Maarten Inghels, Marija Rinkevičiūtė, Martina Stella, Oliver Doe & Teresa Weißert.

K.L.8