THE COLLECTION

Irène Laub Gallery (FEIZI), Brussels (BE)

Giulia Andreani, Charles Laib Bitton, Boris Lafargue, Jessica Lajard, Ye Linghan, Donato Piccolo, Keen Souhlal, Robbert Van Wynendaele, Tatiana Wolska, Chen Yujun, Zang Xuerui & Jiang Zhi.

 

Feizi gallery promotes the relevance of collectors with its exhibition « the collection ». On this occasion, the Gallery transforms itself temporarily into a fictitious reconstitution of a collector’s living room, where pieces of furniture accompany the selected art pieces into a new sensory space. Mirroring objects from daily and domestic life, this innovative production challenges the meaning of collecting as well as the intimacy that exist between collected art and the collector. Far from being nothing more than an accumulation of objects, a collection becomes itself an art piece in that a collection embodies the result of a personal journey and creates complicit connections between the collected pieces of art thereby communicating to the public a new and original message. A collection is also the result of a struggle to create a whole that has meaning, to build a new « world » based on varied and unrelated elements thereby echoing the Renaissance concept of the « cabinet de curiosité ». The fake character of the set and the uneasiness it provokes reminds us of a collection’s inner fragility, of its anecdotical and contingent essence.

Indeed, it anchors itself in the subjectivity of the collector: it structures itself through his movement, imprints itself in his desire, sanctions his psyche. Consequently, a collection doesn’t just occupy space, it organizes it; it can not simply be transported from one space to another without it being fundamentally transformed, without it resonating and connecting differently. With « the collection », Feizi gallery attempts to simulate the idea of a collection anchored in a given space and subjectivity by exhibiting the work of 10 artists using a variety of media such as drawings, sculpture and video. To quote Greek collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos speaking at the exhibition El intervalo luminoso at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao: « Collecting is creating a new whole where the works of art can enter into a dialogue and hence say more than what they express as standalone pieces».

Read more about Boris Lafarge, Jessica LajardDonato Piccolo, Keen Souhlal, Tatiana Wolska, Chen Yujun