The Revenge of The Common Place | Flemish Collateral Event
The REVENGE of the COMMON place
Francis Alys, Song Dong, Rinus Van de Velde
9th May to 30th June 2015
A room paved with a mirror, covered in words written with sweets greets you as you arrive. This is the work by by Song Dong. The room has a beautiful painted ceiling and large windows overlooking the canal which are both tantalisingly reflected in the mirrored floor. As soon as we walked in we were invited to take the sweets to eat and read the explanation to find out why.
In the main room is a huge charcoal drawing by the painter Rinus Van de Velde of himself painting brillo boxes with a selection of the painted boxes and a slide show to explain the work.
In a small room is a work by Francis Alys: Re-enactments. Crime as copy / copy as crime. This is a film of the artist buying a gun and walking with it, visibly, through the streets of the city before being arrested. This is shown side by side with another film of the artist the following day in a re-enactment of the same event having convinced the police to participate in the performance.
On the way out of the museum on the ground floor, we noticed what looked like a wax model of a naked woman lying on a table. On closer inspection - it wasn't wax but the artist herself, covered with food. We were offered a spoon to sample it - but it just wasn't that tempting.
