#philippevansnick

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Painting by #PhilippeVanSnick. . #modernart #painter #painting #artwork #studioart (at M HKA)

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The New York Observer reviews “Hitting it off”

Link to original article

“Hitting it off” at P! by Andrew Russeth February 5, 2014

Is there any gallery owner having more fun right now than Prem Krishnamurthy? A graphic designer by trade, he for the past year and a half has been hosting art shows of unknown and unexpected talents in a storefront space with a signature red floor (and now a signature green ceiling, a feng shui expert’s intervention in the last exhibition). P!’s latest show, organized by Mr. Krishnamurthy, Manuela Moscoso and Sarah Demeuse, pairs work from two artists who are relatively obscure in the U.S., the Belgian Philippe Van Snick (born 1946) and the Spanish June Crespo (born 1982). The effect is commendably shambolic—smart in a pleasantly casual way.

Mr. Van Snick’s work, dating from 1972 and ’73, looks like bone-dry early Conceptualism—a black-and-white video and gridded sheets of paper, each listing two numbers. Give it a moment. That video has two friends in the midst of a ping-pong duel, and those papers spell out the score of a match. This is displayed on and around a burly, eat-your-Oscar Tuazon-heart-out architectural installation—it spans the gallery and looks almost like a hunk of machinery—that Ms. Crespo has built from metal scaffolding, cinderblocks, drywall and the odd newspaper to help it fit snuggly. Braced against the walls, it could be pushing apart the room (à la Chris Burden’s 1985 Samson) or holding it together. It also displays her layered collages with vintage nude magazines and transparent prints of luxury-good ads and news stories. They veer uncomfortably close to Josephine Meckseper’s lazier moments, but there’s a humorous, densely packed rawness that makes it work.

Things are under construction and—maybe—falling apart. Games are being played, frivolous (ping-pong) and deadly serious (the objectification of money, in brands, and bodies). But wait, there’s a final component—a few copies of a little pamphlet that the show’s three organizers compiled as a response to a reading group they were in devoted to the fashionable philosophy known as speculative realism. It’s a modest, playful object, laid out on Ms. Crespo’s shelf in case you’re curious: Take it or leave it. Like so much that gets shown at P!, it’s just another invitation to a weird wormhole that you can journey down as far as you like.

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“Hitting it off," Jan 12 – Feb 21, 2014

Hitting it off curated by Rivet and P! featuring June Crespo, Philippe Van Snick, and Looking for words that aren’t loaded January 12–February 21, 2014 Opening: Sunday, January 12, 6–8pm

Download press release New York Observer Modern Painters Mousse Magazine

Take the classic joke of the ping-pong ball. Its resistance to measurement creates humor. The ball has known properties: colored white, 2.7g, 40mm diameter. And so does the player: colored white, 59kg, 163cm. Although these qualities can help predict certain reactions or spatial behaviors, truth be told, the measurable data matter little. When the paddle meets plastic, both ping-pong and player resonate: they are part of the same set, they meet and select information of mutual significance. The game starts and the joke sparks laughter. Is the ball or the person being hit? 

Another way to say it is: Hitting happens. This time between June Crespo, Philippe Van Snick, and Looking for words that aren’t loaded, a publication that stems from a reading group at Independent Curators International (ICI) two years ago. Here, directions are physical geometries, voices repeat and coalesce, gravity pulls and pushes, and display and displayed ricochet off of each other.

With the generous support of the Agency for Arts and Heritage of the  Flemish Government. Thanks to Galerie Tatjana Pieters.

June Crespo (b. 1982) lives and works in Bilbao, Spain. Crespo focuses on the reproduction of images and their exploitation in graphic arts and sculptural installation.  She studied Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country UPV-EHU (Bilbao, Spain), where she is currently pursuing a PhD.  In the spring of 2014, she will be a resident at Iaspis, Stockholm. Recent solo exhibitions include Amatista (Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, 2013); Reverso (Have a Window, Turin, 2013); El Rayo verde (Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2011). Group exhibitions include Quarter System (Museo Unav, Pamplona, 2013) Pop Politics: Activismos a 33 revoluciones (CA2M, Madrid, 2012); Esta puerta pide clavo (Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Ghent, 2012); Plano peso Punto y Medida (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, 2011); Antes que todo (CA2M, Madrid, 2010). 

Philippe Van Snick (b. 1946) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Van Snick’s practice encompasses photography, film, video, drawing and sculpture, and the medium of painting. His work challenges the perception of time and space through the tension between the intuitive and the mathematical.  Recent solo exhibitions include Através do tempo (Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto, Portugal 2013), Allies/The Archive Revisited (Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium, 2012); Philippe Van Snick (Museum M, Leuven, Belgium, 2010). Prior to that he has shown at spaces such as Établissement d’en face projects (Brussels), S.M.A.K. (Ghent), Palais de Beaux Arts (Brussels), De Appel (Amsterdam), and Wide White Space Gallery (Antwerp). His work has been included in several group shows at MuHKA (Antwerp), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Middelheim Museum (Antwerp), Casteljaloux (Lot et Garonne, France) and La Virreina (Barcelona). 

Rivet is Sarah Demeuse and Manuela Moscoso, together with occasional collaborators. Their projects span events, writing, workshops, exhibitions, conference calls, and combinations thereof—conceptual connection and coherence being key. Some projects are public, others less so. Interested in upsetting subject/object or human/non-human divides, Rivet has focused on notions such as deployment, circulation, exercise, and resonance, with an eye for curatorial self-reflexivity and working methods. Operating primarily from New York and Rio de Janeiro, they have riveted in Spain (Mockup, Artium, Vitoria), Belgium (Esta Puerta Pide Clavo, Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Ghent), Lebanon (We are QQ, 98weeks, Beirut), and New York (Resonance, Goethe Institut; Resonance & Repetition, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts). They have read or talked in Mexico, Buenos Aires, Brazil and in New York at Independent Curators International (ICI) and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics. They are currently editing For All We Know, a book designed by Archive Books, and are preparing The Wilson Exercises (Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger, Norway, and RedCat, Los Angeles). Rivet’s permanent residence is at http://rivet-rivet.net.