Generation

Generation Brussels, 2020
Brussels Gallery Weekend

Against the backdrop of a city slumbering with sleep, Generation Brussels sets out to gravitate people towards its deserted streets, amidst motionless facades and trees appearing mockingly in full bloom. This hushed décor subtly exudes thoughts and emotions that are left unexpressed – a landscape of inner lives trapped in isolation.
Living the current reality feels like being suffocated with air staying in place, of not being able to move anywhere, of being enclosed within.

Entangled in this claustrophobic zeitgeist, artists seek refuge in celebrations of botanical presence, in mesmerising dreams, gloomy fantasies or whimsical quotidian miracles. They evoke enthralling sceneries where limbs and branches fuse, where human and nature intertwine and coalesce into extensions of each other. Consoled by inevitable cosmic rhythms. Others hint at nighttime hallucinations, grotesquely depicting what is dear to them. In their surrender to subconscious wanderings, mythological beings and fairy-like creature rise as guiding protagonists. Yet some artists evoke acts of wonderment through the illumination of trivial phenomena. They use humour to invert rusty power hierarchies or to ignite magic within arbitrary events, unveiling bemusing absurdities to put potential despair within perspective.

Visual storytelling shapes these associations as escapist mise-en-scenes, dotted out throughout the city as an itinerary. They appear unassumingly in the city’s fabric: as vitrines becoming portals for potential flight routes, invitations to immerse oneself in enticing reverie.

With: Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Simon Demeuter, Jot Fau, Naomi Gilon, Tom Hallet, Bert Jacobs, Hénène Meyer, mountaincutters, Elise Péroi, Badi Rezzak, Héloïse Rival and Siemen Van Gaubergen

Text written by, exhibition curated by Evelyn Simons

"Beneath the hulls of boats, voices resurface, embodied by fishlike mammals. They are called the keeper of souls, of prisoners, of pixies, of slaves, of fairies, of hostages... Here, the beluga whale’s skin hangs like a trophy. It is caught, slaughtered, and dried, but preserved. The beluga whale’s voice is one out of ancient tales, from when pirates and sailors, colonisers and priests roamed the sea, looking for land."

Text written by Tom Hallet

installation view "Generation Brussels", 2020

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