Ecstatic

Experimenting on myself

Church of St.-Peter and St.-Paul

Baroque Jesuit church, built between 1670 and 1677, Mechelen.

Design Museum Gent (12-3-2006)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

A rather unique museum we hadn't visited yet. The building itself is a 18th century house of a wealthy family. A lot of the rooms are still original. Interesting to see all that nice furniture and a new thing in those days: wallpaper.

But the main part of the museum is about modern design. They have a permanent collection which ranges from Art Nouveau to Alessi. There several small exhibit rooms for special exhibits. One was about Art Nouveau glass (lovely, I'd like one or two of those), another about a modern (glass) designer (Nanny Still).

The main reason we where there though was an exhibit of drawings from a Belgian architect neither of us had heard from. I saw one of the drawings on a leaflet and immediately knew we would want to see the exhibit.
And I was very right! His drawings were so beautiful, so detailed!!
If you ever have a chance you should definitely check some of the work of Geo Henderick ;-)

Info on the museum and it's exhibits: www.design.museum.gent.be

SMAK (Modern Art Museum, Gent, 12-3-2006)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

Sunday was, as today by the way, a gloriously beautiful day so perfect for a museum visit!

The SMAK is situated in the Citadelpark in Gent and the park is rather beautiful too. There were some cats chasing ducks and other birds, the sky was cloudless and the leafless trees resembled black tentacles against the blueness.

The SMAK is a nice museum with bright open spaces and interesting corners. There's usually several exhibits of modern artists. And here modern means: now! They are still alive and working; still evolving.
The most interesting artists today where Franky D.C. (see http://www.nadine.be), Phil Collins (no not that one, this one was born in 1970!) and Henk Visch (interesting Dutch artist).

The work of Franky D.C. is an interesting mix of old and new, grungy and clean, paintings and installations. And he has a thing for orange.
A part of the exhibit was his collection of orange things ranging from seventies toys to recent invitations to parties. A lot of his work is quite funny. It makes you look at day to day things and reconsider them.

Phil Collins, the artist, is very interested in pop music and youth culture. His main work here was a video showing fans from Colombia singing a karaoke version of a song from the Smiths album "The world won't listen". Local musicians played the music, local fans sang the lyrics and he filmed the singers against a painted romantic landscape (see picture).
The result is often quite hilarious. Most of the fans cannot sing but their performance makes up for that. There's loads of passion in it and we had a great time watching (and secretly singing along).

Henk Visch is a well-known Dutch artist who has been working for quite some time. His work has a nice surrealistic touch to it. Sometimes it looks simple but it always makes you look.

For more info on the artists, the museum and it's exhibits: www.smak.be

Gent 12-3-2006

A trip to Gent

Nessie = Elephant

http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16774661&method=full&siteid=64736&headline=nessie-the-elephant-name_page.html
Is this the true nature of the monster?

Snow!!!

March the first 2006