Projects
The Superhero Project
by Abner Preis
I = S / S = I // = S = Superheroes are in our imagination. If you have an imagination, you are a Superhero.”
In The Superhero Project, we find the artist (as hero) performing by going to work in different cities around the world. His job is to transform experience, shift the perspective of other citizens and help bring out the hero in their hearts. His superpower? The ability to help you imagine yours and become a hero. Taking art to the pedestrian public at large, Abner Preis engages strangers where they work, live and play, getting them to consider: If they were a hero, what three powers would they have?
As citizens ponder the possibilities and applications of power, Preis transforms them into superheroes for a second or two before documenting their diverse reactions. Following performances in Brussels, Istanbul, Rotterdam, Den Hague, Munich and Perugia, the Superhero Performance brought Preis home after a decade in Europe. ‘Invisible: A Portrait of America,’ is the most recent work in the Superhero Project and sees him reinvestigating the American landscape through photography, film, and performance as he created heroes across the country.
For information on previous installments and work from the Superhero Project, please ask.
Abner Preis is represented by Harlan Levey Projects.
Full Artist CV and Press Dossier available on Request
harlan@hl-projects.com
View Available Works in our Exclusive section.
Read More About the Project Origins
Photography Assistant: Ulrike Biets
Costume Assistant: Emellie Mijs
Dirty Line as a Landscape
a Project by Jeroen Jongeleen
Common urban elements from outside the art space brought onto the white walls as an ornamental horizon.
Born from a new but seriously real and physical allergy that seems to resist the city, the project is a contemporary ode (dystopian recallibration) to Dutch (utopian) landscape paintings of the 17th century. The technique is informed and coherent, though the tools are random and salvaged. A human landscape made with sustainable man made dirt through craftsmanship and care; each portrait is made from elements of the perspective it traces and transforms.
Dust, dirt, smear, and smudge.
Evidence from Cologne, Rotterdam, Brussels, New York and St. Gallen in stock. Home or office installation available on request.
A Plastic Bag as a Jolly Roger
a Project by Jeroen Jongeleen
Your street trash turned into a herald of freedom and used in a tribute to noise; a resistance towards the sterilization of urban centers and corporate development of the place we call home.
This series of actions finds itself hanging from the ropes of traditions such as gestural abstraction, performance and vandalism.
City Jewels
A Project by Jeroen Jongeleen (Influenza)
Shattered pieces of car glass are picked from the streets and shown inside as precious collections. Outside they are rearranged to confuse the evidence of their violent origins as a common headache and sign of city woe, becomes an empathetic and beautiful gesture you’re able to mount on the wall; minor tragedy given value as worthless jewels are transformed into precious gems plucked by an artist/urban explorer.
Ten Years
I-95 – a Project by Zoe Strauss
Zoe Strauss is an autodidactic artist who describes herself as a lesbian anarchist from Philadelphia and is widely recognized as one of the most respected street photographers in the world. In her acclaimed I-95 project, she produced images within the structure of an epic poem that can be read in both directions. It begins and ends at home, moving from the specific to the universal and back again. It begins and ends with determination and a ten year work plan that transformed an unused local space into an illegal exhibition that offered an honest portrait of human failures, triumphs and joy in an epic narrative that forcefully brings forward the struggles and beauty of everyday life. For 10 consecutive years, Strauss’s photographic work culminated in a yearly “Under I-95″ show, which took place beneath the Interstate highway in South Philadelphia where she displayed her photographs on concrete pillars in an abandoned space that she and her wife (and later an increasing group of volunteers) scrubbed clean to welcome guests.
This work was recently on display as part of Ms. Strauss’; mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and on 54 site-specific billboards around the city. True to the nature of I-95, photocopies of the images accessioned by the PMA are available in the gallery for 5 euro. Please inquire for information about other available work or to view the full slideshow of images produced as part of her decade long poem.
Beaufort Triennel
by Isaac Cordal
For Isaac Cordal’s contribution to Beaufort04 he created a body of work called ‘Waiting for Climate Change’ that is being exhibited on the beach of De Panne as well as in a local historic villa once occupied by Chalutier.
Beaufort has efficiently created an enormous space for contemporary art in the public landscape and produced a series of work along the coast that would make any museum collection drool. The first three editions included artists like Wim Delvoye, John Baldessari, Al Wei Wei and Anthony Gormley and this year promises not to disappoint. Artists including Arne Quinze, Jaume Plensa, Erwin Wurm and Isaac Cordal will exhibit in a series of public and private spaces throughout the Flemish coast.
For more inf visit: www.beaufort04.be/
March 31st to September 30th, 2012
30 Locations spread across 9 coastal municipalities.
Don’t Love Me too Much
by Admir Jahic
Exhibiting for the first time in Belgium, Admir Jahic (1975) presents a relational installation as well as his latest works and select recent pieces from series created with Comenius Roethlisberger under the pseudonym, ‘The Invisible Heroes.’
From ready-made to ornamental assets, when looked upon together, the common line between these works becomes an operation that employs aesthetics to bring the viewer over the ‘do not cross,’ line and into a tender yet revealing contradiction zone; a place where old meets new, true grapples with false and the aesthetics of mythology get reassembled.
During the last four years, Jahic has exhibited in France, Germany, Kuwait, Italy, Switzerland, England and across the United States. His work has been acquired for numerous collections including the Al Sabah collection, the Thomas M. Kann collection, the Galila Barzilai-Hollander collection, the Von Bartha collection, the de Puechredon collection and others. Works shown at Harlan Levey Projects include: Don’t Love Me Too Much Death or Glory (Death or Glory: Abstract Sculptures) Without You Baby, There Ain’t No Us (with Comenius Roethlisberger) In God We Trust (with Comenius Roethlisberger) A full artist CV and information on all available works are provided on request.
(The precarious future of) Sustainable Trash
Is art nothing more than sustainable waste: Garbage with purpose and a place in the future? Maybe. But if something endures, has it been wasted? Is it still qualified as trash or does it speak of alternative possibilities for value?
The recent work of Stefan Gross sees him as a sort of scientist setting out to transform both material and immaterial cultural waste by employing a formalistic approach to physical properties and a slapstick approach to cultural underpinnings. Found objects, rescued toys and human practical and spiritual necessity are employed as the artist works to recreate a problematic that concerns him: “The world is a serious place these days. This is the problem that I try to solve with my work.”
Following “The Superhero Project,” “More Future,” “Moussism” (with Jeroen Jongeleen) and the creation of the signature “Golden Mousse” (Tobias Allanson), HLP closed the year with a 5th Mousse Process Exhibition. On December, Stefan Gross present figurative and abstract works with polymer, offering a colorful twist to pressing social contradictions.
Stefan Gross is the recipient of the AEG Art prize, the Kunstverein Drawing Prize and the Frits Philips Art Prize. He has been awarded funding for his ‘art you can hit’ project with Stella Boess (Love, Hate, Punch) by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. In 2009, he participated to the ‘Inside Job’ Group Exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, curated by Jeroen Jongeleen).
Calculative + Meditative Works
6 Months of Mousse.
On November 2011, the gallery hosted an introduction to some of our core and affiliated artists.
The exhibition featured mainly Post-Conceptual works with no particular allegiance to medium. Photography, painting, illustration, sculpture and video will be on display.
Works by Jeroen Jongeleen (NL), Abner Preis (USA), Admir Jahic (CH), Vincent Skoglund (SE), Willehad Eilers(GE), Rocco Pezzella (IT) and Isaac Cordal (ES).
Tobias Allanson – Design September
‘MacGyver and the Mousse” was the first solo exhibition from Tobias Allanson at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels, wich took place during Belgium’s premiere design event, Design September.
Harlan says: “I have had the pleasure of working with Tobias on several occasions, and for many years we collaborated on Modart magazine. Tobias isn’t like most graphic designers I have worked with. He likes to do things off the screen. This exhibition is no different as Tobias takes things that have become easy to do digitally and gives them an analogue tweak. During Design September, Tobias exhibited 5 different projects in Brussels. All are showed for the first time.”
About Tobias Allanson:
Swedish Designer Tobias Allanson has earned recognition for his inventive use of common items and the emphasis his practice places on action and approach. Having begun his career as a Graphic Designer, he then worked as an art Director (Modart Magazine), a Creative Director (Freitag) and later a freelance Concept Designer engaged by brands such as Electrolux, L&G and Absolut Vodka. He prides himself on maintaining a rigorous DIY attitude and transforming all types of objects in ways that please him, considering his professional endeavors ‘pseudo-commercial’ as he manages to satisfy clients with his own playful artistic vision.
Moussism Book Launch / Jeroen Jongeleen Exhibition
Mousse Sunday opened up the HLP summer show, acting as the release of Modart Book 02 ‘Highbrow, Lowbrow, Nowbrow’ and featuring works from Jeroen Jongeleen (Influenza).
The event was sponsored by the Salvation Army who donated 40 lounge chairs and couches, which guests could take home.
Organized in partnership with other local businesses (MAPP, Cut Me, Cafe Costume, Pretty Box), more than 400 people came to sit, chat, listen to music, drink, dance, yell and make beautiful moments out of pure mousse.
Other performances included: Teuk Henri, Spookhuisje, eexxccuussee and Nina Boas.
More Future
by Willehad Eilers
Willehad Eilers’ latest project, ‘The Ill Mannered Milkman,’ is a film, which follows the infamous Teddy Milks and the ABC kids into the woods, as a fictional story is transformed into a real event through coincidence, ritual and the reflection of opening doors and dodgy decisions.
In addition to the film’s premiere at HLP in Brussels, the accompanying solo exhibition ‘More Future’ displayed some of the illustrations,masks and experiments that develop the ambitious world of Teddy Milks, the Alphabet kids and a series of sheds that became the skeleton of the film’s story.
“If a story has not happened you can’t commit it to memory. If it has happened, you have to be careful you don’t end up repeating it until it bores you. Eiler’s latest film, ‘The Ill Mannered Milkman’ avoids this trap. The work does not tell a preconceived story, but creates situations so a story might tell itself. Real people, fictional characters, performance and animation collide in the woods where kings are only kings if they are treated as such and ice cream in the sun is always good after a swim.”
About the artist:
Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse (Peine, Germany 1981) is a graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld and Rijks Academy in Amsterdam. He first earned attention for street based character designs, which reflected the same sweet, caustic and sharp sense of humor he would become known for in his drawings, paintings, tags, videos, animations, installations, Internet-based works, and home videos. His work has been shown at the Venice Biennial as well as in group shows in Brussels, London, Rotterdam, Hong Kong and Amsterdam, where he has exhibited with artists such as the Chapman Brothers, Jeff Soto, and Abner Preis.
Nachschlag Heliumcowboy
Last year the topic of Food Waste had its 15 minutes. Former British PM Gordon Brown preached on it and there were enough stories on Dumpster Diving on the nightly news to make you less guilty about what you tossed out.
The Nachschlag Exhibition at the HeliumCowboy Artspace in Hamburg, invited artists to comment on this situation, aiming to use art as a catalyst to conversation and reflection about this issue and how it effects us individually.
Works produced for the show included information throughout the city on how to find edible plants in the urban jungle, a cynical response to Burger King and Fatboy Slim as well as a series of culture Zombies. Food was provided by a local soup kitchen and donated food was dispersed at the central station, a few hundred meters from the gallery.
Of course, food and waste have both been highly tackled themes in art history, and on the subject of food we can look from images from Demeter in Greek mythology right up to the Molecular Kitchen from Ferran Adrias, and Robert Rauschenberg’s use of trash in some of his objects and combine paintings provides as strong a reference to waste as Bataille’s notion of Base Materialism does.
Participating artists:
56k, Alex Diamond, Christophe Lambert, Jon Burgerman, Stephen Smith/Neasden Control Centre, The Invisible Heroes, Elizabeth Haines and Ephameron.
Botanique Museum
Les Nuit Botanique
The No New Enemies network took over the museum located in Brussels botanical gardens during this annual music festival. With music from Scratch Perverts, Why, Morcheeba, Jamie Lidell, Bun Zero and more than 30 other acts, the exhibition welcomed over 15,000 guests in 10 days.
Participating artists include: Neasden Control Centre, Boris Hoppek, Alex Diamond, Bo130, Microbo, Morcky, the Boghe, Wayne Horse, Ado Jahic, Galo, The London Police, Will Barras, Jon Burgerman, Guillaume Desmarets, Never Effect, Ephameron, Maoma, Btoy, L’Atlas, Jerome ‘G’ Demuth, RuediOne, Smash137 and a small glimpse at the A-Z private collection of The Don.
Visitors were welcomed with a catalogue and a paint balloon and invited to bomb the police before viewing the rest of the show (Inside Riots, Jerome G. Demuth), invited to play on Le Trébuchet: (A playground game we all know, the borders and national customs that none of us can deny. If we stop trying to reject them, maybe we can start to play between them and focus on what we have in common), and few surprising first time collaborations in a show, which mixed installation, interaction, photography, painting, mural art and thanks to Tobias Allanson, even some robotics.
Modart Magazine
Published between 2003 and 2009, Modart magazine provided an inside look at art, artists, ideas and attitudes coming out of action sports and urban activist communities around the world. From the beginning the magazine focused on action, movement and the relevance of art and imagination during a period where no authority seemed there to distill what was happening.
In 2009, the magazine transformed into a bi-annual book series. The first title, ‘Forget Art: In Order to Feel it — The Best of Modart Magazine’ is a must-have for those trying to come to grips with the street art phenomenon and the artists and players, who shaped it and eventually outgrew the term as it began to stick.
Today, Modart continues to be a leader in locating and supporting socially engaged emerging arts practices.
Modart is owned by Rebel Media.
No New Enemies Network
No New Enemies is an international network of artists, designers and creative thinkers, which is registered as a European non-profit association in Brussels, Belgium.
The No New Enemies network was founded as a structure to support artists and work towards the social exploration of media aesthetics. It’s creation was inspired by a traveling community of artists in the spirit of friendship and fraternity with shared fun as initiation.
NNE Web provides contemporary art and culture news with a focus on action based practices and community engagement in the art of living.
NNE actions are privately, publicly and often not funded. The network is registered as a Non-Profit (asbl/vzw) based in Brussels, Belgium.
Sarah Auction
6-Step Philanthropy … a group of more than 100 artists mobilized to support a girl who had been denied funds to acquire the capacity to hear in her right ear. While state insurance covered an operation, training and equipment for her left ear, it deemed that one ear was enough. We felt lucky not to have to make such decisions and on the strength of donations from these artists, organized a print magazine, exhibition and auction, which raised more than the 25k Sarah needed to balance her hearing.
donations by a.o. Abner Preis (US), Astrid Yskout (BR), Atsuko Ishii (JP), Babs Decruyenaere (BE), Bert Lezy (BE), Bfree (NL), Bitches in Control (NL), Boris Servails (BE), Brecht Vandenbroucke (BE), Craig Atkinson (UK), Danielle Lemaire (NL), Daxodiva (DE), Dennis Tyfus (BE), Elisa Smile (ES), Elisabeth Noels (BE), Ephameron (BE), Fanny Garcia (FR), Federica Ubaldo (IT), Francesca Iurilli (CH), Gemma Correll (UK), Havec (FR), Herr Sommerferien (BE), Inge Cornil (BE), Jack Usine (FR), Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen (NL), Jiem (FR), John Bobaxx (FR), Julien Kedryna (FR), Kati Heck (DE), Korneel Detailleur (BE), Leen Van Hulst (BE), Lennard Schuurmans (NL), Lieven Segers (BE), LLCoolJo (FR), Logan Hicks (US), Louis Reith (NL), Luke Ramsey (CA), M!CH Decruyenaere (BE), Marcus Oakley (UK), Marie Rosen (BE), Max-o-matic (AR), Mentary (CH), Miruki Tusko (BE), Morcky (IT), N’Roll (FR), Oles (NL), Pacolli (BR), Philip Paquet (BE), Pinda! (BE), Prutpuss (BE), Rachel Agnew (BE), Robert Rebotti (IT), Sighn (US), Sumo (LU), Swoon (US), Thomas Mazzarella (BE), Tony Papin (FR), Vaast Colson (BE), Ward Zwart (BE), Yoko Nono (FR), Zeroten (UK) and many more!
Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia
Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia is a border control checkpoint to enter your own dreams. It’s operated by the Department of Dreamland Security, who are here to protect and serve your Dreams. They will ensure a safe and smooth passage into your own Dreamworld and make sure you Dream the right Dream, most suitable for you and your needs. At the same time preventing the wrong people from entering your Dreams and turning your Dreams into nightmares.
Potential “immigrants” should download immigration form WXRZYQSFG-23587-492 A from the Dreamyourtopia website, print it out, fill out both sides of the questionnaire, and bring it with them to the Officer On Duty operating the Checkpoint. And please remember: ALL questions are important and need to be filled out as completely and truthfully as possible!
After the form has been approved (please note that “officially” bribing is not allowed) the visitor can join the queue waiting to be let into the interrogation room where he/she will be questioned about the motives for wanting to live your own dreams; “Who will pay for your Dreams? And why? Will your Dreams bring you Fame and Money? Describe Utopia? Does it exist?” If all goes well the special Passport to the land of Dreams will be stamped with the necessary visa and the Reality-Line can be crossed into the Unknown.