Works in the Exhibition

 

(Flat screen monitor in window)

 

Antoine Roegiers

From the painting « The Academy » by Le Nain, 1640.

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection, DVD, 2′15 2005

2/5

 

(Lobby area, to the left: 16:9 screen)

 

L’académia from the painting « The Academy » by Le Nain, 1640.

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection, DVD, 2′15 2005

2/5

 

(Main room)

 

La tentation de Saint Antoine (The Temptation of St Anthony)

from the painting « The Temptation of St. Anthony »by Jérôme Bosch 1505/1506

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video projection on 3 screens, DVD, 11′30 2008

1/5

 

(Mid area floating screen to the right)

 

Les proverbes flamands (The Flemish Proverbs)

From the painting « The Flemish Proverbs » by Pieter Brueghel 1559

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection, DVD, 5′15 2005

1/5

 

(Mid area to the left: single screen on wall)

 

Les sept péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins)

From the painting « The Seven Deadly Sins, or The Vices » by Pieter Brueghel 1557

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection, Blu-ray, 18′30 2011

 

(Large back room to the far right)

 

Le cri (the Cry)

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection, DVD, 5′15 2005

1/5

 

(Small back room to the far left)

 

Moi Dormant (Me Sleeping)

From the painting « Me sleeping » by Antoine Roegiers 2006

music: Antoine Marroncles

Video Projection , DVD, 3′30 2008.

1/5

 

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YoungProjects is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Antoine Roegiers in the US. Born in Braine l’Alleud, Belgium and a graduate (with honors) of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Paris, Roegiers is a highly accomplished painter who often engages classical traditions in his canvases, drawings and videos.

During the early 2000s Roegiers began investigating the practices of great painters, from Rembrant to Courbet, though an intensive investigation into meaning of mise-en-scene, composition and metaphor. That led to a series of paintings of his own family members rendered in the specific manner of Velasquez, Jordaens, and others. (To further complicate the readings, each member was rendered as a child). In the process he began to understand the way in which the Old Masters conveyed emotional narratives, often violent or deeply emotional in their subject matter, through composition alone. That in turn inspired him to use animation to further explore the nature of narrative within painterly traditions.

The painting “The World Turned Upside Down” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder for example, uses 118 characters to capture the daily life of a small town. But for Brueghel each character is also meant to represent an individual proverb so Roegiers uses animation to emphasize the proverb through physical action—something unavailable to Brueghel in his time. “Animation” says Roegiers, “is the best way to catch the spectator by surprise.”

That’s particularly true in “The Seven Deadly Sins”, which is also by Brueghel. When Roegiers first saw the painting he realized that it contained “hundreds of perfect, frozen moments” as he says, which were entirely cinematic. Thus animation allowed him to get “inside” the painting and break down its narrative approach.

Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Temptation of St Anthony” received a similar treatment and proved to be a revelation for the artist. As Roegiers’ explains, Bosch assembled a “delirious narrative patchwork” as he describes it, where dozens of character are enacting private moments contemporaneously, and yet there is no temporarily to speak of. The subject, St. Anthony, appears in several places at the same time, while the laws of perspective are left aside to provide multiple viewpoints simultaneously. “I wanted to consider the idea that, in the end, what we see in Bosch’s painting doesn’t exist,” he explains. “We are inside St Anthony’s head; what we are seeing is his mental vision.”

Roegiers chose these artists in particular because of their “distaste” of realism, as the artist explains, and their relationship to “the monstrous, madness and poetry.”

 

His videos and paintings have been hosted by the Palais des Beaux Ars (Lille), the Noorbrabant Museum (Holland), The KultureHuset (Stockholm), La Maison Rouge (Paris), the Kunsthalle Krems (Austria), ARCO (Madrid), the Regional Center of Contemporary Art Montbeliard (France), the Frissiras Museum (Athens), the Maison de Art deCreteil (France) and many more.

His works is in a number of important collections including the Thomas Olbricht Collection and others