Want another example of how funny this tiny country called Belgium can be? Fabrice Murgia. The 28-year old theatre director from the southern (French speaking) part of the country was elected man of the year by the lifestyle supplement of Walloon news weekly Le Vif. In the northern (Flemish speaking) part of the country he is virtually unknown and his theatre performances pass unnoticed. But they will have to talk about the man from Verviers: Murgia is invited for the renowned Festival d’Avignon in 2014, and will be collaborating with Flemish music and theatre company Lod for a big project. Murgia’s powerful new performance Exils, which premiered at Théâtre National (Brussels), is part of Cities on stage, an ambitious project for theatres in six European cities, supported by the European Commission.

Exils. Exiles. Right after the beginning you see the five big white letters on the huge screen between stage and audience. Just as the title of a movie would be shown, before it begins. Within ten minutes white clouds of smoke are floating over your heads. This is what I like about Fabrice Murgia: here’s a young theatre director trying to find a way to come up with theatre for this day and age. Trying to appeal to a generation used to watching movies, going to rock concerts, playing computer games, spending their lives on Facebook and Twitter.
 

Exils is his fourth performance and once again you just have to be in awe of Murgia’s wizardry: his ability to construct strong theatrical images, using lights, sound scape, extra effects (smoke) and camera’s. Time after time the curtain closes on a scene and then opens again to show you a completely different, mostly dark but strong image. As I said before (when I reviewed his Life: Reset) here’s a man who knows his Romeo Castellucci and his David Lynch.
 

His images are impressive, and he sure knows how to create a mood, but when it’s all over you are left wondering what it is Murgia (his grandparents moved to Belgium from Spain and Italy) wanted to transmit. He isn’t telling you anything new about, or shedding some revealing other light on the themes he touches upon.

You witness the struggles of a black exile, feeling lost, feeling erased, calling home, being interrogated, painting his body white. And Murgia mixes his story with the lives of two young people feeling lost over here as well (one of them with a burn-out, the other is living with a life-size doll just to feel alive). It’s the first time Murgia includes some texts he has written, but nevertheless, it’s more with his visual imagery than with his insights that he made an impression on me. Nevertheless: never heard of him? Then you really might want to check this guy out.

Watch the trailer here.

Thinking of going to Michel François (MAC’s) before it closes this weekend? Then make your trip more worthwhile by stopping over at BAM (Mons) on the way for Le modèle a bougé (‘the model moved again’; through February 5), a small exhibition comprising works of Marcel Duchamp (La Boîte), Gerhard Richter (Pyramide), Roni Horn (Clownmirror), Gillian Wearing (Dancing in Peckham), Constantin Brancusi, and Belgian artists such as Lili Dujourie, Chantal Maes, Gert Robijns and Leon Vranken. Inspired by a quote from Edgar Degas it focuses on the dynamic relationship between artist and model, combining works from both modern and contemporary artists. There are innumerable other ways one could compose an exhibition around this central and rather vague theme, and of course this modest museum was limited in its choice of the works it could present, but nevertheless: elegant exhibition.

If I would have been one of the museum guards at MAC’s, I would have had bets going on with my colleagues on what type of visitor is taking what kind of poster. Fashionably dressed art aficionado? He’ll take the one with the woman and the sunglasses. Mother with a stroller? She’ll go for the one with the baby belly. Wonder what I’m talking about? 45.000 affiches (1994-2011), by Michel François, an exhibition that turns watching art (posters) into a slightly different experience (through January 29; at the Grand-Hornu site, near Mons). Each of the 45 pictures by this Belgian artist, made throughout his career, has been printed on 1.000 copies. So everywhere you go, you’ll find stacks of large posters. And each visitor is allowed to take one of those 45 prints home. While looking at them, you wonder: which one? Strange how it makes you experience these works of art in a totally different way. Or is it just me, chronically unable to make decisions?

Sometimes, it all depends on you. As a spectator. On the work you are willing to do, in your mind. Does that imply that you’re dealing with a lazy performer on stage? Not necessarily so. Take Salva Sanchis, who used to be part of AT De Keersmaeker’s company Rosas (co-choreographer for Desh (2004) and Love supreme (2005)). He has certainly done his homework for Angle: a performance as an investigation into the perception of dance. How do we, as an audience, look at a piece and what might influence the way we perceive it? In Angle (premiere at Kaaitheater, Brussels) Sanchis offers you several elements: dance, live music (short piano pieces played by Yutaka Oya) and some ‘thoughts’. It’s up to you to link them. Or not. A cerebral approach that will not be to everybody’s liking, but I was charmed by it.

Angle. The word is already projected on the back wall, when you walk in. On a small blackboard at the right hand side of the stage you can read tonight’s programme: the list of contemporary piano pieces Oya will be playing (Ligeti, Berio, Cage, Harada) and the snippets of texts you will be hearing (John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Albert Einstein). For each particular piece you’ll find words describing the movements/choreography linked to it: Perceptible change, Pinball, Chair, It’s good to be outside, Nexus…

Then Sanchis walks towards a small mixing desk on stage and the first thing we hear is John Cage, talking about music and sound. Right after Cage had finished talking, I already wanted to press the pause button. My mind was still busy taking in everything he had said, all the nuances of his thoughts, and what it implied for what I was going to witness. But Oya started playing, Sanchis started dancing, and I checked the blackboard for what I was or was supposed to be seeing.

To begin with, I have to say that I just love watching the way Sanchis dances: slowly, as if he himself is discovering how his choreography should be, on the spot, but nevertheless with some sort of unmistakable, internal logic. If the fingers of the left hand are going up in the air, then the toes of the right feet just have to go in a certain direction and the head just has to twist in another. That kind of logic.

But then… I must admit that throughout Angle the words on the black board didn’t really influence my perception (my brain’s fault, or his choreographies?). Sure, sometimes they were a good description of what I was seeing: Chair, when all Sanchis did was to move that single chair on stage, or Pinball, when for once, he was moving really quickly. And what about the quotes? So, to cut a long story short: I’m not sure if Sanchis really succeeds in what he set out to do. All I can say is that all the elements he (and Oya) offered were enough to keep my mind at work: the live music, the dancing, the quotes on the back wall, Cage’s, Cunningham’s and Einstein’s thoughts.

Some people will certainly find this tiresome to watch. I didn’t. And what a funny coincidence: a couple of spectators left the theatre, during the premiere, just when these words were projected on the back wall: people want to be surprised, but only by things they expect.

More info here. Short video clip here. Next performances: 10-2 (Monty, Antwerp), 21-2 (Stuk, Leuven).

One of the things I had been meaning to tell you about, at the end of last year, was one of my favourite December shows: Kati Heck at Tim Van Laere Gallery. Saturday is your last chance to see Multikulti Sause, Hecks first exhibition at the gallery, so do drop by if you happen to be in Antwerp. Heck (32) was born in Düsseldorf, but moved to Antwerp when she was eighteen. Multikulti Sause is a reference to Angela Merkel’s statement ‘Multikulti is tot’ (multiculturalism has failed); Heck uses the word Sause (‘party’ in German) wanting to stress the fact that all kinds of people can have a great time together. Hecks canvases are monumental, and even if you don’t like her style (mixing all kinds of elements and influences), you’ll have to admit that they possess an intriguing quality. Even Charles Saatchi has discovered her art: he owns a couple of Hecks and will show them during an exhibition he has announced on his website, Painters’ painters. A new catalogue will be presented Thursday evening at Tim Van Laere.

‘This looks like a puppet-show, the only thing missing are the curtains.’ One of the actors says it, rather casually, during Niks of Niks, but in fact it’s the perfect summary for the new play by Belgian theatre legend Jan Decorte, conceived in collaboration with Comp. Marius from Antwerp. It premiered at Kaaitheater (Brussels). Their radical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much ado about nothing (performance in Dutch) really resembles such a puppet-show: it’s a bunch of grown-ups performing Shakespeare as if they were still kids. It makes for a funny evening, but nothing more than that.

Shakespeare or not: with Jan Decorte you know what you’re at: his performances never take longer than an hour. And to make this one even easier to take in, Decorte, who acts throughout Niks of Niks as the story-teller, gives the audience, right after the start, a short summary of what will happen (‘But if you think about leaving, don’t forget to applaud first’). In interviews about this performance, he has made it quite clear already what he thinks about this play: it’s nothing but a bunch of people just hanging around, fooling around and dancing a bit.

In Decorte’s version, it’s not at all about the intrigue. He doesn’t care about building tension or working towards some sort of climax. The actors are just having fun, as kids would have, playing the love stories of grown ups, and dancing in between. Decorte puts lots of slightly obscene, silly jokes in his adaptation as well. As usual with Decorte: the stage setting is simple but beautiful: all of the actors are wearing the same blue dresses, and that lopsided house, up in the air (by Belgian artist Johan Daenen), could really work as a work of art.

It’s a joy to watch these actors fooling around, but after a while you start craving for a little bit more than just all this silliness. In interviews they state that this play says a lot about the way people behave in this day and age. I must say watching this scabrous comedy didn’t really make me think of anything more profound. So: nice one, but I’ve seen better plays by this respected, eccentric Belgian theatre director.

On tour till March 17. Info here.

Shall we start this year off on a lighter note? Although… a lighter note? A gallery show centered around an excerpt from the Ave Maria? Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae? Now and at the hour of our death? With works referring to religion and the virgin Mary? What I mean is this: visiting the new show at Galerie Rodolphe Janssen (Brussels, through February 11) certainly is a good, not too highbrow way to start your new year of gallery shows. It is a nice collection of 12 works of art, by Wim Delvoye, Kendell Geers, Thierry De Cordier, Thomas Lerooy, Adel Abdessemed, Jonathan Meese, Andra Ursuta and Yan Pei-Ming. All dealing with serious stuff, although not all of them are to be taken that serious, I guess. No sacred atmosphere during the opening, yesterday, that’s for sure: French fries were served to everyone. After all, this is Belgium, right?

Don’t panic. Your beloved Utopia Parkway hasn’t jumped ship. Au contraire. There were so many things I had wanted to tell you about at the end of last year, but then that damn flu hit me. Be assured, I’m working on Utopia Parkway: the comeback. For now, let me just thank you for following this blog in 2011. I wish you a wonderful 2012.

Wonder what this is? It’s me and my camera, looking up at the top of the Cupola at Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. Looking at a small part of maybe one of Sol LeWitt’s most amazing wall drawings: #801: Spiral. Standing in that Cupola, looking at what appear to be lots of parallel, horizontal white lines, but what is in fact one slightly sloping line covering all of those walls, gave me a really strange, zen-like feeling. LeWitt’s Spiral is part of Extended drawing (through January 15), a beautiful exhibition worth going to Maastricht for (as I had promised: my X-mas tip n°2). It focuses on the work of four artists who have made drawing central to their oeuvre: Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra. More pics after the jump.

So this is what it really looks like, that huge Cupola and Sol LeWitt’s Wall drawing, donated in 2002 to the Dutch museum. Six of his wall drawings are presented in Maastricht, with four of his other works, as part of Extended drawing, an exhibition focusing on four American artists who have used drawing ‘to strip art of (easy) sentimentality and an over-emphasized subjectivity’, as curator (and soon to be ex-director of the museum) Alexander van Grevenstein writes in the exhibition catalogue.

‘Working as they are on the margins of movements such as Minimal and Concept, they play a leading role in cleaning up art, in which sentimentality, commerce and superficiality so easily conspire’, he continues. ‘With their profound artistic insights, these four artists have successfully liberated this modest medium (drawing) from its old traditions.’

At first glance, it might seem strange to combine works of these four great artists, as they appear to be completely different. LeWitt’s elegant wall drawings, Bruce Nauman’s neons referring to sex and violence, Robert Mangold’s ‘shaped canvasses’ and the black linen canvases by Richard Serra, an artist who is known mainly for his large-scale sculptures. But by looking at these works, you start seeing things they have in common. The differences and the similarities make you think. And even if you don’t want to think: it’s still a great exhibition, with works of art by four outstanding artists.

For a short clip by Chris Teerink about ‘drawing’ Sol LeWitt’s ’Wall drawing #801′ at Bonnefantenmuseum, click here. Teerink is working on a documentary about LeWitt’s work. More info here.

Going to the Belgian seaside for a stroll, during the X-mas holidays? Then opt for Knokke-Heist, and combine your walk with a visit to The Panamarenko Paradox (through January 15), an exhibition with works by this renowned Belgian artist – now retired – linked to his recently unveiled fountain (The waving crabs, blog post here). I had my doubts about this exhibition, but I have to admit that is better than I expected it to be. I’m not sure about all those red walls, for they tend to make the drawings sort of disappear, but all in all the Paradox is a nicely presented, modest survey of the strange and poetic world of this one of a kind Belgian artist. A couple of Panamarenko’s bigger works of art, lots of drawings and some binoculars to take a closer look at all the details of the crabs outside. And even that restored Meikever (ladybug), which was stolen from SMAK (Ghent) and damaged in 2006. For those of you who missed the big retrospective in Brussels in 2005.