Middle Gate

The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

Hugo Roelandt

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(c)Estate Hugo Roelandt

Auto Matic Art Project, 1983

Bob Van Aert, Hugo Roelandt, Marc Holthof, Greet Verlinden

Performance

"From action / performance to the study of MOVEMENT: the videoregistration of mechanical 'auto mobile' objects (toy cars) who chose their own movement and randomly form a colour-composition for the public." - Hugo Roelandt

< Marchandise, Montevideo, Antwerp, April '83

< Ex, Brussels, May '83

< Parkeren in De Singel, De Singel, Antwerp, August '85

A.M.A.P. is a mobile composition in which the role of the different objects is stressed. A given quantity of colour-elements – framed in glass – moves in contrast to the background. A video-camera registers the resulting variations in colour and the relation with the movement which becomes visible underneath. Three colour-elements are equally represented but they chose their own rhythm and place and so form a composition that is projected on a videoscreen. Movement is created by an electro-chemical reaction. The elements themselves define the colouring. Where the electro-chemical reaction ends, the order is fixed. The static square in which the elements evolve contrasts with the colour-dynamics in it. The elements and their accidental combination don’t carry any symbolic meaning but simply accentuate the auto-mechanical development of the composition. ‘Auto’ refers here – like in ‘autodidact’ – to ‘self’, ‘self propelling’. A.M.A.P. refuses the imposed and fixed patterns of artistic products. It questions the meaning of an art that wants to represent something.

(Abstracts from Hugo Roelandt: Let's Expand The Sky, red. Mark Holthof, Occasional Papers, London, 2016)

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