COMPLETE COLLAPSE

Henri Jacobs, Ria Pacquée

drawings, photos, video

10 April through 15 May 2016

Point of departure for the exhibition is the work Complete Collapse by Ria Pacquée (1954). These words, spelled out in euro coins, refer to the financial crisis that started with the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers Bank in 2008. Ria Pacquée’s work has always contained a strong element of social awareness that is evident in her performances in public space, as well as in her observational photography of urban surroundings – an activity she calls streetrambling.

Recently, she was in Myanmar where she recorded daily life. In the exhibition she shows a series of photographs featuring repeatedly appearing circular objects, this connets them to the round shapes of the coins in the Complete Collapse work. Also the video Running Around is shown in which Pacquée runs in circles around dilapidated street furniture and small neglected buildings and flower beds.

Henri Jacobs (1957) shows new Journal Drawings (Journaal Tekeningen), a series of works he started producing in 2003. In this series he develops shapes and patterns that are subsequently abandoned again to make room for new research and experiments. The drawings show forms that connect to the circular shapes in Ria Pacquée’s photographs.

In the exhibition, their work is presented side by side and interlaced. Henri Jacobs further will produce two large wall drawings in the gallery that he will also draw in June on the walls of the BOZAR Museum in Brussels. Next September Galerie Maurits van de Laar will participate in the Art on Paper art fair at the BOZAR with a solopresentation of Henri Jacobs’s Journal Drawings.