Monique Thomaes

2009

2009 | the intimacy of space

by

the intimacy of space

In-Between, Antwerp, Belgium 2009
multimedia

Johan Pas – abstract from his text to the Exhibition

For In-Between Monique Thomaes constructs a temporary environment about perceiving and being perceived. By doing this she tries to cross some conventional borderlines: those between art work and art audience, those between inside and outside, those between art context and art work. By putting a row of glass panels against the back wall, the wall is being deconstructed into a play of reflections. The ‘out’ is being pulled ‘in’ and vice versa. These reflections are being filmed and projected in the adjacent room. Another room contains the direct registration of the street scene. The visitors are moving in the empty exhibition space between both zones: togetherwith the images from the street they create the spectacle of reflections and projections. Two led-screens are the link between public space and exhibition space. De constant flow of words (and their reflection) generates images and ideas. It is like a score for a reflection about architecture.

Johan Pas

more:
Johan Pas

2009 | plaatsen / lieux / spaces / orte

by

plaatsen / lieux / spaces / orte

Benedenzaal CC Kortrijk, Belgium 2009
multimedia

In the same way as the beholder, faced with this emptiness, has an encounter with something inside himself, eye in eye with a projection of zooming into the videostills who mirror the street map of New York, in the same way the image asks for the urbanized world as a condensed place of disappearing and revival on the rhythm of our heartbeat. And this is realised out of a bird’s- eye view. Is this the view of the supposed panoptic eye? In this case we face rather an eternal researching eye. It is an eye that first of all wants to registrate. And so this eye catches the ever changing rhythm and compresses it to the abstract minimal of her regularity. As if Monique Thomaes here, in this specific spatial context, puts a selfportrait forwards. It is a portrait of a postmodern subject as the fragmented residue of an enduring visuality. Beyond every large gesture, her installation functions as the homeopathy of every pathetic sentiment. The scanty poetry of her imaging never has the intention to go into any kind of nostalgia. There’s one central thing that remains. This is what Marcel Duchamp one’s mentioned in a pointed way and in his unsurpassed French: “une optique de précison flottante”. Which we can try to translate as: “an optics of flowing accurancy”.

Joannes Késenne