HAU Hebbel am Ufer

Retrospective Miet Warlop
Berlin Art Week Special
September 14–16, 2017

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HAU Hebbel am Ufer
HAU1, Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 Berlin
HAU2, Hallesches Ufer 32, 10963 Berlin
HAU3, Tempelhofer Ufer 10, 10963 Berlin

T +49 30 25900427 / tickets [​at​] hebbel-am-ufer.de


On the occasion of Berlin Art Week 2017 HAU Hebbel am Ufer presents a showcase of works by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop. In her performative works Warlop makes visual art using the means of theatre, developing “living images." These are located somewhere between absurd theatre and outlandish tableaux vivants. The texture of things is central to Warlop’s work, as is creation and destruction against all economic reason. For the very first time, the three works Mystery Magnet (2012), Dragging the Bone (2014) and Fruits of Labor (2016) that Miet Warlop herself calls “portraits of a decade” can now be seen together in one retropective.

In the performance Mystery Magnet Miet Warlop puts a round of surreal figures on stage to finish themselves off. Her palette not only contains the whole colour spectrum, but also wafts of fog, foam sausages, mini trucks, walking trousers, human balls of wool and a chorus of hair driers. This all adds up to a series of absurd images made of colours, forms and figures, held together by an absurd humour and an obsessive urge to destroy, otherwise only known from cartoons. 

Dragging the Bone captivates audiences with living sculptures and animated objects. The solo is based on the bronze sculpture Fegato di Piacenza, an ancient model of a sheep’s liver, meant to aid Etruscan priests making oracles. Miet Warlop dips her body in plaster, and through a series of physically demanding movements, brings a huge nondescript object to life. Flying sharks, exploding hairballs and foam fountains also turn up—chemical reactions are constantly discharging. In her inimitable way, Warlop tells of the individual, its desires and its fears, giving free reign to its absurd humour.

Fruits of Labor represents a mixture of performance, concert and visual art, a revue of songs and dances around a constantly transforming, awkwardly oversized white cube. The audience is plunged into a glowing mixture of light, colours, sounds and emotions. At some point the whole space seems to be an instrument. For all its lunacy, this psychoactive parade of images and objects is also the artistic reaction to a world that is falling apart. A reaction that positions its own glittering chaos against control and restriction. 


Programme:
Miet Warlop, Dragging the Bone (2014)
September 14+16
HAU3

Miet Warlop, Mystery Magnet (2012)
September 15+16
HAU2

Miet Warlop, Fruits of Labor (2016)
September 16
HAU1


Miet Warlop, born in Torhout (Belgium), lives and works in Brussels, Berlin and Ghent. Warlop has a master degree in Visual Arts, she graduated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent where she studied three dimensional art. Miet Warlop has been first presented at HAU Hebbel am Ufer with her work Nervous Pictures in November 2012 for the re-opening under the artistic direction of Annemie Vanackere. In 2013, her works have been presented on the Baltic Triennial of International Art-Vilnius, at Lisson Gallery London, and the Blueproject Foundation in Barcelona. She was part of the Berliner Theatertreffen in the frame of Stückemarkt in 2014. After Dragging the Bone in 2015, in April 2017 her performance Fruits of Labor was shown at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, lately she exhibited her performances at BOZAR Brussels.

With the support of: The Goverment of Flanders