04.04.2025
The Musicologists & Maison Caca
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đn the Cold Breeze of a New Earth
25.03â03.04.22 in CLAPTRAP AntwerpChloĂ© Arrouy
Dennis Meersman
Janne Schimmel
Léa Tissot-Laura & Anna Sougy
Lena Kuzmich
Mathias Mu
Pedro Gossler & Thijs Jaeger
Poster by Saskia Smith & Sam Evers
đn the cold breeze of a new earth, a perversely-shaped creature is born. It emerges out of the synthetic waters, still sticky with slime from its mothers womb. A dusky ancient light sweeps across the sky as the newly born being, shiny and cold, opens its eyes to look straight at you. Together you linger through the plastic valleys, between metallic forests, into the castle of occult sound. Suddenly memories from a distant past float to the surface, dragging you to places where binary thinking was seeded deeply in earthâs crust. Yet the cold touch of the newborn creature closes this passage, drawing you back to the reality where artifice and mysticism live in harmony. As you look at all the crossbreed creatures that rule this kingdom of hybridity, you suddenly see yourself.
âOribe Doroâ (2021) refers to a type of historical Japanese lantern or shrine made out of stone and named after a tea master who designed these lanterns for Japanese tea gardens. It is part of a new body of work that is created digitally and 3D-printed in PLA. The pedestal it rests on consists of a mixture of concrete and recycled PLA which was used to print the supportive parts of the piece itself. Oribe Doro has the allure of a relic, like the artefact of an object that never existed. Playing with natural forms and industrial materials which aims to drive up the conceptual tension within the object itself. Although the name implies a functionality, Oribe Doro takes the role of an abstract entity floating between past and future, covering itself with ornaments as a way of expression, in search of a personality.
Pedroâs film âOozeâ (2021) conjures up a parapsychological examination of reality within internet dialectics. The narrator, whoâs captivated by superstition, guides us through a digital scenery of supernatural occurrences. We discover paranormal logics and how they notably obstruct âreal-worldâ modern routines.
To accompany his video piece, Pedro invited Thijs Jaeger (NL, 1990) to design a rocking-chair-gamer-seat, which ultimately conjoins the digital linkage of gaming with a haunted aura often associated with rocking chairs. Thijs Jaegerâs work often pose as relics of a religion born of internet culture and authorless mythical lore.
ChloĂ© Arrouyâs (FR, 1993) sculptural practice is based on an experimental approach to traditional metalworking techniques. The objects she makes often refer to medieval societies and their abundant production of disturbing forms. Through the manipulation of signs from different Western cultural contexts, she questions the paradoxes these symbols hold, whereupon new fields for experimentation come into being. Between sensuality and austerity, innocence and infamy, her practice pushes her to explore the empathic power of forms and their capacity to provoke a physical sensations â often that of pain. The universe she conjures up resonates with the realms of witchcraft, torture, but also of BDSM and adolescence â all of which are propitious territories that evoke her relationship to existence, sexuality and culture. Beyond the veil of reappropriating symbols, dynamics of revalorization lie at the heart of her practice: the materials used are for a large part the a direct resurgence of obsolete domestic objects. For this exhibition, ChloĂ© is thinking in collaboration with composer Dennis Meersman. They have been creating their work through back and forth interactions to collectively spawn a scenery of occult ambience.
Dennis Meersman (BE, 1996) is a Belgian composer. Operating from Brussels, he is mostly known under the moniker Diony Lake. For his composition, written for the joint work with ChloĂ© Arrouy, Dennis works around several motifs with a sound palette consisting of orchestral instruments, digital synthesis the human voice â namely, that of his own and that of his father, Marc Meersman.