GUIDED TOURS |Contour Series #3:First Floor
Contemporary art between walls and moss
A guided tour of the open-air exhibition Contour Series #3: First Floor. Contemporary art amidst walls and moss takes place every month in the hotel ruins in Mechelen’s Vrijbroekpark, led by curator Andrea Cinel.
Arts centre nona has taken over the ‘Haunted Hotel’ in Vrijbroekpark with the third Contour Series, a series of exhibitions for visual and audiovisual arts. In First Floor. Contemporary art between walls and moss, ten Belgium-based artists present work exploring the interaction between architecture and the environment, where fauna, flora and graffiti artists have left their mark.
© Kato Six
© Luca Vanello
DE KUNSTENAARS
The invited artists present seven new and three existing site-specific works. For instance, visual artist and researcher Luca Vanello creates poetic and fragile installations using plants from which he extracts chlorophyll, the substance through which a plant converts sunlight into energy. The result is white plants, beautiful yet ghostly. For Contour Series, he interweaves this practice with a living tree within the ruins. He also creates sculptures from hydrogels, a living material that reacts to changes in light, humidity and heat. Subtle transformations such as the warping, contracting or twisting of the surface become increasingly visible.
Visual artist Sina Hensel uses natural pigments from local plants and stones for her paintings. She paints on four large wooden panels, drawing inspiration from a medieval image of a bat with many hands. In doing so, she explores how such a bat might behave within the abandoned ruin. Sound artist Hannah Lyssens delves into the world of bats and bees, collaborating with a local beekeeper to create vibrant soundscapes. On the walkway, she also uses text to draw a link between the constant hum of the motorway and the (to humans inaudible) noise of the bats in the Haunted Hotel.
There is also sculptural work. Claude Cattelain has drawn inspiration from the bricks of the ruin to create a five-metre-long sloping platform made of brick and wood. Visitors can walk on the structure and experience the surroundings from a new perspective. Patterned Loops, Looping Matter by Kato Six is a two-metre-high undulating, perforated metal plate in the shape of a chandelier that frames the surroundings in various ways: moving through the work creates new patterns and perspectives. Sien Custers, meanwhile, works with steel, textiles and recycled materials. She presents her sculpture inspired by Frida Kahlo’s Sun and Life (1947), a surrealist masterpiece about fertility, life, nature and pain. Nestled within the metal structure is a seed, ready to sprout. Also on display are works by Jana Coorevits, Lola Daels, Maëlle Dufour and Erien Withouck.
Curator: Andrea Cinel
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Location: Hotelruïne Vrijbroekpark, Ridder Dessainlaan 65, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium
Guided tours with curator Andrea Cinel (booking required):
- Sunday 28 June at 3 pm
- Sunday 5 July at 3 pm
- Sunday 30 August at 3 pm