ESCAPE ARTIST

Where performance art, taking a chance and the urge for freedom meet: THE ESCAPOLOGIST.

Escape artists have been around for centuries. Of course it is Harry Houdini who made the escape act a recognised entertainment at the end of the 19th century. Nevertheless it was Norman Murray Walters, a contemporary of Houdini, who coined the phrase 'escapology' for his skills.

Sculptor Silvia B. creates wonderfully strange animal-like child creatures who wouldn't misfit the oldtime freak circus, especially when they are posed as contortionists or escape artists.
The ironical fate of 'Numero Noir' is now being transferred to the glass showcase of the art gallery. No escape there ...


Silvia B., 'Numero Noir' (2010) (collection Museum Beelden Aan Zee)

Big Biedermeier Brother

As the Napoleonic wars left Europe in political disorder the Congress of Vienna drew plans for political restoration of Europe (in effect between 1815 and 1848). As a consequence public life was highly controlled by censorship prompting people to concentrate on the domestic and the non-political. Aestheticly the glorious and militaristic Empire Style made way for a domestic and bourgeois (floral) style, later named Biedemeier, ironically after the pseudonyme of a parodist of the time.

In 1948 George Orwell penned down his fears for a controlled society. Partly because of Orwell's warnings in the year 1984 it was still unthinkable that daily life would be monitored 24 hours a day. Meanwhile nobody takes any notice of CCTV and video surveillance anymore, accepting computer monitoring, biometric identification archives and GPS-tracking as a fact of life.

In Burçak Bingöl's series of sculptures titled Günebakan [F(ol)lower] closed circuit surveilance cameras are recreated as ceramic ornaments with floral decorations. They depict nicely the comatose bourgeois acceptance of 'Big Brother'-society.


Burçak Bingöl, 'Günebakan [F(ol)lower] III' (2011)


Burçak Bingöl, 'Günebakan [F(ol)lower] II' (2011)


Burçak Bingöl, 'Günebakan [F(ol)lower] I' (2011)

Showing until 14/06/2011 at Cda Projects in Istanbul.

BLANK

Dutch artist Jan Robert Leegte mostly uses the virtual world of the computer screen to create installations, media art and sculptures. The empty architecture becomes structure. The same approach he uses for his 'Slot Machine': an actual slot machine with it's graphics removed.

Being void of any means of telling wether you win or lose this slot machine offers true liberation, one might say.
Very Zen!



Jan Robert Leegte, 'Slot Machine' (2010)