ZOO LOGICAL GARDEN
26 August until 1 October, 2006
Opening: Friday, August 25th, 6 pm
Harry Malter Family Park
Bosheidestraat 15 – 9070 Ghent
(Heusden) – Belgium
Open on Saturdays and Sundays,
from 11am to 6pm or by appointment.
Tel: 32 (0)477/764.623
info [at] beeldend.be
From the 26th of August until the 1st of October 2006, Zoo logical Garden brings 12 national and international artists together in the Harry Malter Family Park in Ghent (Belgium). The project consists of an exhibition, a catalogue, a weblog, video-screenings and discussions.
The participating artists and critics are:
Monika Bakke (Poland), Stefano Cagol (Italy), Vaast Colson (Belgium), Marta De Menezes (Portugal), Stefaan Dheedene (Belgium), Johan Grimonprez (Belgium), Katie Holten (Ireland), Shih Chieh Huang (Taiwan), Charlotte Léouzon (France), Alon Levin (Israel), Gert Robijns (Belgium), Anri Sala (Albania), David Shrigley (Great Britain), Superflex (Denmark)
Curator: Angelique Campens
The Harry Malter Family Park is a perfect illustration of the ‘Disneyfication‘ of our society: reality has been replaced by a fake world consisting merely of cheerfulness, bliss and safety. Nature has been completely subjected to the fantasy view of modern man with all cruel and dangerous aspects being left out. The wild animals have been tamed and sit safely in their cages.
Except for showing various species of animals, the park is also fulfilling the role of a fairy land. The general atmosphere is rather absurd and unreal because of curiosities like the ‘Mouseland’, a King Kong slide, the painter Daniel D’s fairground notices etc. These weird attractions might cause a feeling of alienation, something one does not experience when visiting a perfectly orchestrated Disneyland.
Entertaining tourists is not the only aim of an animal park however. The amusement is always combined with news and information about the park’s research, enabling the visitor to form an idea of the breeding programmes, the behavioural patterns, the conservation and ecology. As such, the animal theme park is a combination of an amusement park and a zoo, with mainly commercial goals and an emphasis on entertainment.
The practice of collecting, describing and exhibiting are the core tasks shared by animal parks and museums. Just like in a museum, a zoo is a place where information and entertainment go hand in hand. An exhibition in a family park raises various questions however: how to organise an exhibition in a public space that looks surreal and where the prevailing atmosphere is so dominant? Is it possible to still add something to such a highly-charged setting, or does this lead to an even more exotic view? The Harry Malter Family Park is not a typical exhibition space, and is diametrically opposed to the concept of the ‘white cube’ in a gallery or exposition hall. Can there be a dialogue between a setting like this and the works of the artists? Or is it exactly in such places that a natural dynamic occurs, adding an extra dimension to the artistic project?
Zoological Garden shows a combination of work in situ and existing work that has been specially selected for this context. The project wants to bring artists and critics together to discuss one of the previously mentioned topics. On this basis, Monika Bakke (Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland) wrote the text ‘The Predicament of Zoopleasures’ for the catalogue. The artist Johan Grimonprez, together with Charlotte Léouzon (freelance curator and talent scout for Passion Pictures), compiled the DVD/Video Library ‘Soo Logical’ with movies like Gorillaz, El Manana, Pete Candeland; G Bush Jedi; Planet of the Apes; Halflife, Greenpeace, David Leaf; Remind Me van Röyksopp, … Superflex will bring their record compilation of animal noises a series that resulted from their bio-gas project in Africa.
Zoological Garden shows work by artists who create imaginary worlds and who put the relationship between reality and fiction into question.
More information:
info@beeldend.be