The Death and Resurrection Show

28 September - 3 November 2011

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Brand New Monochromes by Stefaan Quix

Quix presents a new series of small-scale works incorporating the algorithmic and minimal compositions that he usually exhibits as large-scale installations. Here, in a way reminiscent of old and precious miniatures and icons, small wooden boxes embed the latest display technologies of ubiquitous mobile devices (iPod and iPad) to showcase the work on noise and pixel that is so dear to the artist, with a new luminous and surprisingly analog rendering.

One can marvel at the fusion of the pixels (the usual constructive element for Quix) into subretinal textures, blurred as paintstrokes or soft as watercolours.

The artist, while still maintaining to his meticulous approach, explores how new technologies bring about a new perception and new distribution formats for his works.

Artist statement

Twinning
For this showcase at IMAL I have placed together an older work, "Three Monochromes: RGB", and a newer work, "Not With A Bang But A Whimper" hoping that the dialogue of these, at first glance diametrically opposed, works might enlighten some of the strange similarities that bind these two autopsies performed on some of the foundations of the analog and digital mediascapes.

Three Monochromes: RGB
During the space of 4 hours an empty, black screen metamorphoses into a red (green, blue) screen. The pixel (instead of its analog counterpart the frame) is chosen as the atomic time element of this inexorable transformation. An image seemingly frozen in time blessed with quantum uncertainty leads stochastically, pixel by pixel, shade by shade, to its entropic conclusion: red (green, blue)

Not With A Bang But A Whimper
An electronic landscape slowly zooms out, revealing abstract images which actually depict an extreme close-up of a (color) cathode ray tube showing analog noise. This seemingly black-and-white static - grayscale noise at best - reveals this RGB construct as a stochastic and entropic process.

Occam meets Quine
The same algorithm, generating the same elementary particles at the same non-place and the same time inevitably results in one and the same movie(s), one realized by digital means, the other by analog means; all other characteristics including the actual images are to be deemed secondary.

The Death and Resurrection Show
Times change and time changes; the last few years my obsession with loudness and bigness has given way to an interest in smaller sounds and scales.
With the iPhone's 300+ dots per inch screen (aptly christened Retina Display by its maker at Apple) the digital picture's elements have become so small and so dense that they transcend the eye's capability of perceiving them as atomic components of the digital image... already, the death of the pixel.
A surprising twist of this early demise is that compression, that bane of anyone involved with the transmission of the digital image, has now been set free of its physical chains and can be recontextualised into something altogether different: digital static.
Plus ça change... indeed.

text by Stefaan Quix / Bart Van Looy

About Stefaan Quix

Stefaan Quix (1967, Brussels, Belgium) creates media artworks, sculptures, films and mixed media artworks. By applying abstraction, Quix creates works in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic, a cool and neutral imagery is used.

His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of media art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.

His works sometimes radiates a cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By emphasising aesthetics, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.

His works doesn't reference recognisable forms. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretations become multifaceted.

Stefaan Quix currently lives and works in Brussels & Paris.

text by 500letters.org

www.quix.org