2012–2016

OBJECTIF EXHIBITIONS (vzw) is a not-for-profit institution trafficking diverse contemporary artistic practices into and out of Antwerp, Belgium. We open our doors to both curious enthusiasts and specialists. We also exit those doors, from time to time, to present exhibitions in other contexts and dimensions.

Uniformly, everything at Objectif Exhibitions or organized under its imprint is referred to as an exhibition—presented at differing scales, along differing temporal structures, and with correspondingly different billings.

FUNDING

The Flemish Community
EU Culture 2007–2013

TEAM

Director: Chris Fitzpatrick
Production Assistant: Marnie Slater
Administration/Translation: Judith Lindekens
Graphic Design: Goda Budvytyte
Website Programming: Mindaugas Uba
Photography: Kristien Daem
Intern: Kassandra Stiles

BOARD

Anne Judong: Curator, Bozar, Brussels
Nicolaus Schafhausen: Former Director, With de Witte, Rotterdam
Win Van den Abbeele: President of the Board, Co-founder, and former Director of Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp
Steve van den Bosch: Artist, Antwerp

ADVISORY BOARD

Frederique Bergholtz: Director, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, Amsterdam
Chris Evans: Artist, London
Anthony Huberman: Director, Artist’s Institute, New York
Gabriel Kuri: Artist, Brussels
Sophie Nys: Artist, Brussels
Leon Vranken: Artist, Antwerp

SPONSORS

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OPEN

Wednesday to Saturday, 2–6pm

DIRECTIONS

From Centraal station, take tram 2 or 15 to Groenplaats, turn left on the Nationalestraat, take the second left onto Kammenstraat and we are down the street (next door to Cafe Berlin). Walk down the hallway into the courtyard.

From Berchem station, take tram 8 to Mechelseplein, walk along Vleminckveld until it ends at Kleine Markt. We are on your right.

View a map here.

Nina Beier does not complete works. They remain subject to re-use, re-titling, re-articulation, and reanimation. With Four Stomachs, Beier defaces a series of busts (bronze portraits, plastic mannequins, ceramic figurative folk art), and positions them in the residential windows above Objectif Exhibitions.

Cows have four stomachs and forget their past, almost before it has passed. A bust is always born disfigured—limbless, partial, abstracted. Beier disfigures them further, and strips them of their histories.

Placing the flattened faceless fronts of the figures flush against the window glass, Beier symbolically seals their exposed inner surfaces—containers contained. Observing like eyeless sentinels or debilitated gargoyles, they too will be watched—fixed in place, or periodically shifting locations—over the next four years.

Altogether, Four Stomachs is a machine. Sentient, it reserves the right to restart itself at any moment, or to halt completely (but so does Beier).

Nina Beier (b. Aarhus, Denmark, 1975; Lives in Berlin) graduated from the Royal College of Arts, London (2004). She has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2012-16); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011-12); Standard (Oslo), Oslo (2011); and Mudam Luxembourg (2011); among many others, as well as in group exhibitions at Moca, Miami (2011); Extra City, Antwerp (2011); The Swiss Institute, New York (2011); SC13, San Francisco Antique & Design Mall (2010-11); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2010); ICA, London (2008); and Tate Modern, London (2007).

Beier worked collaboratively with artist Marie Lund from 2004-2009.

France Fiction was founded in 2004, and includes Stéphane Argillet, Marie Bonnet, Eric Camus, Lorenzo Cirrincione, and Nicolas Nakamoto. Operating as an exhibition space, a magazine, a curator, or a singular artist, France Fiction produces a variety of forms—from sheer formlessness to editions, from renewing the forgotten grave of Demetrius d’Exarque to producing pedagogical ink or playing marbles (with both changing rules and enigmatic conditions that affect the results).

For one year, Objectif Exhibitions will host France Fiction’s Cabinet d’ignorance in its office. The title relates to the history of display cabinets for objects with unknown functions or origins. An office is fitting—the site of administration, meetings, paperwork, and so on. A glass and steel vitrine, transplanted from France Fiction’s space in Paris, will provide a vehicle for disseminating other forms of knowledge, available in all of their uncertainty.

France Fiction (founded in Paris, France, 2004; consists of Stéphane Argillet, Marie Bonnet, Eric Camus, Lorenzo Cirrincione, and Nicolas Nakamoto) has exhibited its work in solo exhibitions at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2012-13); and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2011); as well as in group exhibitions at Frutta, Rome (2012); Artissima 18, Turin (2011); Galerie Stereo, Poznan (2011); ACCA, Melbourne (2011); Wysing Arts Center, Cambridge (2010); HBC, Berlin (2010); Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2009-2010); Serpentine Gallery, London (2008); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008).

France Fiction, also a space in Paris, has held exhibitions and events for artists including Darius Miksys, Mark Aerial Waller, Pierre Leguillon, Vava Dudu, André du Colombier, and Jean Yves Jouannais.

Will Rogan exhibits twelve photographic objects in Curtain—yet none is a photograph exactly. Through video, collage, sculpture, paper, or mistreated light, images are re-circulated, veiled, and obliterated.

Painted prisms, for example, are unable to refract—are they dead lenses, closed apertures, hypnotic tools? With three new light boxes, abstract forms emerge from images depicting abstract forms. A verso lacerates its recto. Disparate times are conflated. Fracturing a Xeroxed image of Canadian magician Doug Henning, as he appears to fade through a brick wall, was Rogan interested in Henning’s achievements or failures? And from what angle do our architectural elements erase Rogan’s redactions of Henning’s contemporaries?

Photographically, Rogan collides mechanics and effects to correlate the lingering transcendental aspirations of art with those of magic, and positions the power attributed to artists uncomfortably against the agency of magicians.

Wasn’t There Yesterday. It’s a fitting title, since she wasn’t here yesterday either. Scheduling conflicts. Yet traces remain in the works Tamm’s assistants installed in the basement at Objectif Exhibitions. And having so common an Estonian name, Tamm arranged for another Triin Tamm (living near Antwerp) to attend the opening in her place.

Tamm’s title is not only rooted in practicalities, but also in issues of mediation, inter-subjectivity, professional expectations, exhaustion, and freedom. While Tamm can’t be everywhere, she’s rarely alone. The Carousel Collection contains work by many others—invited to contribute a slide to the collection. They will change weekly, with new contributions from people closely tied to Objectif Exhibitions.

Are the objects and ideas Tamm presents both containers and generators? If so, our basement serves well—containing, as it does, a chaotic lattice of heating pipes along the ceiling, and spreading upwards, throughout the entire building.

Triin Tamm (b. Paide, Estonia, 1982; lives and works) graduated from Poznan Academy of Arts (2005). A retrospective of Tamm’s work was exhibited at OUI, Grenoble (2009), for which a corresponding catalogue was produced. Her work has since been included in solo and group exhibitions internationally at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2012); Sans Serriffe, Amsterdam (2012); KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga (2012); Corner College, Zurich (2011); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2011); HIAP, Helsinki (2011) and Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, (2011).

Another Triin Tamm lives here, in the Antwerp area, working as a Prince 2-certified business advisor, entrepreneur, and certified ScrumMaster.

Objectif Exhibitions exhibited itself to its neighbors at Kleine Markt 7-9, by hosting an informal party for residents of the building.

Philippe Pirotte, Win Van den Abbeele, and Patrick Van Rossem founded Objectif Exhibitions in 1999. Mai Abu ElDahab became its Director in 2007, and moved the organization to its current location. Please view the following websites for the previous exhibition history at Objectif Exhibitions:

http://www.objectif-exhibitions.org/1999-2007

http://www.objectif-exhibitions.org/2007-2012