„I want to indicate the duplicity (visible/invisible, present/absent) in its totality and make it experienceable.“ Lili Dujourie
Galerie Michael Janssen is pleased to announce its first exhibition by Belgian artist Lili Dujourie (b. 1941). Lili Dujourie’s work includes video, collages, sculptures, installations and photography. On view in the exhibition are recent works such as wall pieces, floor sculptures and a video installation as well as earlier works such as a photographic series and a slide projection.
The five new papier maché and stainless steel floor sculptures from the series Maelstrom can be seen as a critique to the overflow of information in a world saturated by news, images and information - actual newspapers were used to make the papier maché. Springing from the ground and reminiscent of organic forms they shift between the figurative and the abstract.
The video installation il fait dimanche sur la mer consists of seven screens displaying black and white images of the Ostend beach. For a whole week in March 2009 Dujourie filmed a section of the beach day and night, 24 hours. During the exhibition, only one video from the actual weekday will play and the other six screens will display a still image from 12 noon. So for example, during the exhibition on Thursdays at 11 a.m. the middle screen will show the video from that day in March 2009 in real time, while the other six will show the still image of 12 noon of the other respective six days of the week. A research of the relation between art and time, the installation undescores the experience of viewing; through the repetitive movement of the ebb and flow and the distant horizon one hardly notices the passing of time.
Grounded in the Flemish tradition of painting, the early photographic series from 1977 and the slide projection from 1980, also on view, are comments on the definitions of painting and sculpture. The series Mémoires des mains consists of pieces of fired clay placed on wall shelves that show the negative imprints of the artist‘s hands. A link between „thinking“ and „making“, the series follows the idea that we all carry our life memories in our hands since childhood and focuses on the sensuosness and immediacy of the material.
Dujourie was one of the few female artists experimenting with video in late 1960’s and 1970’s and her pioneering videos are radical explorations of the then new medium. Since the 1980’s she has been making sculptures and it remains her predominant art form today. Her sculptures are often executed in techniques and materials that resonate with many centuries of tradition, such as draped velvet, marble intarsia, lead or ceramics. She is continuously concerned with contemporary reinterpretations of themes, forms and gestures from art history, which is one reason why her many-faceted but dense and precisely articulated oeuvre is so visually and intellectually rewarding. In her articulation of minimalism and conceptual ideas, her works draw questions on the relation between matter and subject and how this relates to perception.
Her work has been presented at the P.S.1 in New York, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, at the Documenta 12, at the 2010 Sharjah Biennial and at the 2008 Gwandju Biennal. In 2005 a major exhibition (curated by Lynne Cooke) at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels was dedicated to her work.
Lili Dujourie, installation view, 2011, Galerie Michael Janssen
