Can you feel it? Tactility and/in print
After Abäke’s performative exhibition ‘All the knives (Any printed story on request)’ in 2012, Frans Masereel Centrum and Z33 are launching a second curator project about graphic arts and print. The purpose is to make the dynamics of graphic arts widely known among the general public and to survey the transdisciplinary nature and new presentation forms of the medium. The curator is Freek Lomme, curator, writer, and founding director of the artistic project space Onomatopee in Eindhoven and of the publishing house Onomatopee. His exhibitions and publications are characterized by ‘transdisciplinarity’ and ‘tactility’. Lomme questions this concept of ‘tactility’. As a curator, he encounters a lot of poetry in the materiality of artistic practices. As an editor, he meets many writers who tap into the subject. Through ‘Can you feel it?’ he explores the characteristics of tactility in print.
The feeling of tactility arises through contact with a surface. Sensitive qualities move us: hardness, softness, porosity, shine…. Everyone is sensitive to tactility. Recently, tactile aspects have regained attention. No longer a mere side-effect, tactility has become an assigned and incorporated quality in our high-tech, knowledge-driven experience economy. After being robbed of our senses in the digital society, we find ourselves in a transitional phase experiencing a revival of the tactile.
Several contemporary artists develop a tactile artistic language: they guide us through the experimental experience of the tactile world. During a residency at Frans Masereel Centrum, six artists explore the tactility of print and printmaking in the graphic workspace. The tactile qualities of graphic techniques make up an underexposed subject that deserves more attention. Also among theoreticians, there is a growing demand to map tactility. The position of tactility in a high-tech capitalistic society is studied in depth in an accompanying publication.
‘Can you feel it?’ and the simultaneous exhibition ‘Ways of Folding’ by graphic designer Geoffrey Brusatto, share an artistic consciousness about the process of dematerialization in a digital and standardized society. Traditional analog media relate more and more to new digital media, and adapt to the changing ways to deal with information and material. New forms of the printed book and the repositioning of tactility in graphic and contemporary art illustrate this.
Curator: Freek Lomme (NL) Artists and authors: Sema Bekirovic (NL), Matthieu Blanchard (FR), Christopher Breu (US), Lieven De Boeck (BE), Frederic Geurts (BE), Alessandro Ludovico (IT), Esther Krop / De Monsterkamer (NL), Ulrike Mohr (DE), Thomas Rentmeister (DE), Marieke Sonneveld (NL) Coproduction: Z33 and Frans Masereel Centrum Graphic design / key visual: Pierre Martin Vielcazat – Stalles (FR) Assistant production and presentation: Juliette Pepin (FR)
Publication ‘Can you feel it – Effectuating tactility and print in the contemporary’ – OMP118, Freek Lomme (Ed.). Available at the Onomatopee website.
Opening 19.06.2015
Location: Z33
18u30: welcome
- introduction by Jan Boelen (artistic director Z33)
19u-22u: exhibition open for public and reception
- Ways of Folding.
- Can you feel it?
Award Ceremony ‘Wanatoeprijzen’
This evening the winners of the ‘Wanatoeprijzen’ will be announced. The awards for young artistic talent are granted by Het Belang van Limburg during the opening of EXIT/15, the graduation show of the master departments of Architecture and Interior Architecture (UHasselt), Audio Visual Arts, Photography and Product Design (LUCA) and Visual Arts (Hogeschool PXL).
Location: Herkenrodekazerne, Maastrichterstraat 100, Hasselt
19u: Doors open
20u: Opening and Award Ceremony ‘Wanatoeprijzen’
20u30-22u: EXIT/15 open for public
22u-02u: Party
