EN
The objects of Catherine Vertige Collection offer a scenario in which to ‘play out’ questions of possession and private property. Where there is collection, there is the fetish of the object - a complex investment in the things that we keep. Fetishism means ‘value added’ - totemistic value, Marxist value, erotic value - but also sentimentality. If to collect is, necessarily, to indulge the fetish of the object, is it not also possible to use the collection as a tool with which to critique that same fetishism it fuels?
FR
Komplot montre la Collection de Catherine Vertige dans laquelle chaque objet fait partie d'un scénario qui aborde l'idée de possession amoureuse et remet en cause la notion de propriété privée. Où il y a une collection, il y a le fétichisme de l’objet - un investissement complexe dans les choses que nous collectons et décidons de garder avec nous. Fétichisme signifie ‘valeur ajoutée’ - valeur totémique, valeur Marxiste, valeur érotique - mais aussi sentimentale.
NL
Komplot toont de verzameling van Catherine Vertige waarin elk object deel uitmaakt van een scenario die de idee van bezit en privé-eigendom aansnijdt. Waar er sprake is van verzamelen, is er ook sprake van fetisjisme voor het object, of een complexe investering in dingen om te bewaren. Fetisjisme betekent ‘toegevoegde waarde’ - een totemistische waarde, een Marxistische waarde, een erotische waarde - maar net zogoed een sentimenteel belang. En als verzamelen gelijk komt te staan met de overgave aan de fetisj voor het object, kunnen we de de verzameling dan niet evengoed aanwenden als een kritiek voor datzelfde fetisjisme?
Photo Credit: Fabrice Dermience
Julien Goniche
Deux Assiettes
Plastified inkjet print on paper, 42 x 73 cm 2016
This piece was offered during a diner with Catherine Vertige.
Alex Morrison
Light Behind The Mask
MDF, electric cable, light bulb, paint 2016
The outline of this object situates between the architectural model and the Mycenian mask. Following his solo show ‘Galerie de la Reine’ in Komplot in 2016, the artist continues to search the decorative from a postmodern point of view.
Filip Gilissen
Listen To Your Dream
Gold plastic frame, duotone digital print on gold vinyl 21 x 29,7cm 2015
These two frames are part of 50 unique and cliché portraits of Golden Retriever puppies with feel-good quotes from Ancient Greek philosophers. From ‘Real Fake Gold is all around you’, this work confronts us with the relative value of all earthly things. He is in dispute with the emptiness and glitz that characterizes the ‘haute couture’ of the contemporary art world. Filip’s work flirts with kitsch, but between art and kitsch he makes unusual discoveries.
Deborah Bowmann
L’homme rêve n°4
Wood, lacquer, aluminium 73x14x120cm, 2015
Busts in clay, 2016
These works are created at an intersection of display stands and sculptures. This series constitutes a family of objects with various forms sharing an identical patine, their geometrical forms and curves paying homage to formalist minimalism. The lacquered finish of these gleaming arrangements relates to the craftsmanship of cold, identical industrial products, whose design is dictated by functionality and efficiency. These standards are here put at risk by barely functional structures, the dimensions of which are unsuitable to their supposed use. The series ‘L’homme rêve’ performs a structural play upon the different manners to ‘support’ and to ‘present’. It is supporting in that case, two handmade non-fired clay painted busts representing the artists in their attributes of gallerist.
Fabienne Audéoud
Poverty
Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm 2015
This painting belongs to Audeoud’s latest series involving text. The previous series titled ‘For Prayers’ for the most dangerous places on earth such as North Korea or Syria is currently been shown at MACBA. A selection of older ones were also presented in her Komplot solo show in 2011.
Cécile Noguès
Untitled (Chains)
Ceramic, 2016
A part of this series of chains was shown on the occasion of a residency at L’A Project in Palermo in 2014. The work of Noguès oscillates between the two classical schemes of figuration and abstraction, in painting and in ceramic. Most of her objects and images take their meaning from their materiality and colors but at some points, she integrates the narrative of symbolic or mundane nature and artifacts.
Elise Van Mourik
Opel Cascade
Aluminium, car paint (Opel Cascade), rotating motor 1 rpm, plant, 2014
This project deals with the common function of indoor plants for decorative purposes and their agency in differents contexts such as office, hotels, shop windows, homes; anywhere where you’re welcome, and where they fulfill their invisible function. As a stereotype it reflects on the design of our environments as scenario that continues non-stop. The pots produced industrially with the technique of metal spinning; forcing an aluminium disk against a solid steel mold while spinning. They are finished inindustry-grade automotive laquer.
Emeline Depas
Wet SB
Plastic bag, roots, coral, condom, earring, resin, wave cap 2016
This piece speaks of desire and fetishism ; Through the choice of accessories, the relationship to The Other, sexuality, desire, and fantasies that leave more to the imagination, the remains of an absence, a lack.
Francisco Camacho
Re-enacting performative alternatives against the postcolonial figure of the institution called ‘we’
Ceramic (one of his arms is broken), 2011
This ceramic was made as a reproduction of a pre-Columbian piece from the collection of Dora Janssen in Brussels during a performance at Komplot in 2011. The collection of Dora Janssen is displayed at the MAS Museum in Antwerp. Many of its pieces were taken illegally from Latin American countries and then were given to the Flemish community as payment for sucession taxes. The Pieces coming from Colombian art are part of the cultural heritage of the Colombian citizens and can not leave the country.
Martin Belou
The Ham Flips-Flops
Linoleum, wood, cork, 2015
The Ham Flips-Flops have been conceived in the frame of the wellness camp, a workshop that Martin Belou gave to the studio for immediate spaces (Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam) along with Parking Club (Elise Van Mourik & Laure Jaffuel) in October 2015. Designed by Belou and produced with the complicity of Marie-Marie Vergne, the Ham Flip-Flops were gently distributed to the participants of the wellness week-end (a public opening was concluding the workshop) in order to move around the spa, the mud bath, the sauna, etc. Even tough those flips flops have been soiled, Catherine Vertige purchased them as some kind of remain of all the drops of wellness, mud, sweat and all kind of funny mushrooms that they gathered. The Ham Flip Flops are therefore some kind of communautary relics.
Laurie Charles
DOGS
Framed watercolors on paper, 2006
Dogs is an unfinished series of dog paintings. Two of them are part of Catherine Vertige’s collection, the third and last «dog» is staying in the house of the artist’s mother. As summer exercices or holiday workbook, this series of animal paintings are those of one travelling amateur. Amateurish watercolors realised in the deep countryside of Tarn-et-Garonne in the South West of France, in the heat of a summer month. Made in the artist’s living-room to end hanged in the collectionneur’s Salon.
We Are The Painters
She Looks Like A Mountain
Oil on wood, 2015-16
The chairs were shown in Komplot in ‘Anger Management’ and were part of a large installation in TRUST in 2015. The painting of the face of the woman on the back of the chair is a new piece for the collection. In 2006, the hair circling the woman’s face, mixing into the landscape is the starting point of the work of the duo who is now working on film ‘Paint for Ulma’ integrating several feminine characters around the life of a goat.
Cléo Totti
Silvery Tonic Shoes
Leather, hair, foam, 2016
The shoe is the fetish of Vertige’s wardrobe. Totti’s approach to form is a critique of the body’s objectification by using its very own tools : surgery, computerized image, cosmetics and style. The silver can cover the whole body like being integral part of its fragmentation into symbolic parts such as the hands, feet, hair, skin, clitoris, eyes…
Aline Bouvy
Strategy of Non-cooperation 1
Plaster jesmonithe, 2015
The stray dog is a recurring figure in the recent works of Bouvy in which she sketches human intimate parts of the body in natural or constructed environments aswell as in their relation to internal liquids.
Vava Dudu
Untitled
Drawing on paper, variable dimension, 2015
Like in her band La Chatte, Vava is a colorful New Wave. In singing, drawing and sewing clothes, she puts her touch, a long thin line, a string of words and figures dancing on Xanax or ‘Où es-tu?’ between tenderness and rebellion. «Excitant dans le lit. la voix te regarde. bien décidée de me faire marcher vers toi. ça existe ça. Xanax. Bien essayé.»
Kasper Bosmans
Lenape-Penn (Snapping Turtle)
Spherical magnets, turtle shell, 2016
The practice of Kasper Bosmans is much linked to that of an alchemist that observes his environment and floats between reality and fiction. Lenape-Penn (Snapping Turtle) was recently shown in P/////AKT, Amsterdam. For the Catherine Vertige Collection he reworked the magnets on top of the shield.
Jean-Alain Corre
Untitled
Fabric, steel, plastic, 2016
Jean-Alain Corre has a common point with Julien Goniche. They both enjoy good meals and good times together and sometimes with Catherine Vertige. With champagne and ambiance. The height of their time is the sunset. When they can share their views on the world. Wandering in cities and parks after parties.
Marthe Ramm Fortun
You Are My Riot
Clay, fresh water pearls, semi-precious stones, broken glass, 2014
Marthe Ramm Fortun is a Norwegian artist. This piece, was originally part of a performance in Museum M in Leuven, but has thus far never been shown separately. The piece is conceived as the extension of a protest.
Laure Prouvost
Untitled
Watercolour on paper, 2015
This piece was offered to the collection after the show TRUST that took place in Copenhagen in 2015. With the message of trust and the broom refering to the new year longing for refreshing breath. The brush is as much cleaning the dust as impregnating the paper with colours...
Seyran Kirmizitoprak
Karma
Collage, 150 x 170 cm, 2016
Please, be quiet when you pass me piece cause every sound, you make. Disturbs the sleep of these haunted souls.