AiR base Nr. 07 Kris Vleeschouwer (BEL) Glass Kast

TONSPUR (www.tonspur.at) has invited Kris Vleeschouwer from Antwerp, Belgium to be their artist-in-residence in January 2008.

The artist is also participating in the exhibition “The Sound Of Art. TONSPUR_expanded”, based at Freiraum/quartier21 and the AiR base, where he will show his kinetic sculpture Glass Kast(2004/2008). It is one of the first in his series of spectacular falling glass installations (in various dimensions) for which he received an international art prize in 2005. Glass Kast is a construction of wooden shelves lined with 200 glass bottles. A mechanism at the back of the shelves moves very slowly but continuously. From time to time, bottles fall off the shelves, and the glass shatters on the floor.

(Courtesy Annie Gentils Gallery) Kris Vleeschouwer, born 1972 in Mortsel, Belgium, designs and produces sculptures where, via both high-tech and low-tech means, a junction is formed between knowledge and scepticism, relativism and absurdity. The sculptures seem most akin to factory production lines, but without the production of anything “useful”. They are aesthetically charming and robust in their finish, aggressive in their action, and melancholic in their concept. They contain the drama and symbolism of unintentional accidents, with a lot of noise, dangerous broken glass and unnerving alarms.

Small, trivial occurrences (for example, a meandering goldfish) consistently engender violent and clamorous consequences. The unpredictable connection between a (seemingly) trivial cause and the explosive effect is utterly fascinating, from a philosophical as well as a political point of view.

Eröffnung: Fr 11.01., 19h
Ausstellungsdauer: 12.01. bis 24.02.2008,
täglich 10 –20h
Ort: AiR base next Freiraum/quartier21, transeuropa http://quartier21.mqw.at/kuenstlerstudios/