Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner at Dvir Gallery

Artists: Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner

Exhibition title: Un coeur simple

Venue: Dvir Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Date: March 21 – May 4, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Dvir Gallery

Dvir Gallery is pleased to present a duo show of Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner entitled ‘Un coeur simple’.

Lawrence Weiner’s ‘IN TANDEM WITH THE SANDS’, is a specific sculptural-language work created in English, French and Dutch, for Dvir Gallery Brussels. It continues the idea of translating his works into the local language. Clear, concise, lapidary, and affectless, such sculpture in the guise of statements is designed, in the artist’s words, to offer ‘a universal common possibility of availability.’ Whether in the context of art or in the broader context of cities and landscapes, his texts create a multi-inspirational performance of humanism. His unique “handwriting,” recognizable and anonymous at once, maintains a genuine materialism in a world of art that is becoming increasingly focused on objects. As such, Weiner’s work is contemporaneous in ways that appear to transcend the needs of future generations.

Adel Abdessemed started ‘Cocorico Paintings’ a new series of works, in 2017. Composed by used printed tins, this new body of works continue to reveal Abdessemed’s fascination of ductility of materials, the intrinsic possibilities that each of them possesses. In fact, the artist doesn’t limit himself to working with their specific concrete and aesthetic characteristics and potential, but he, instead, wants to emphasize and enhance the cultural and historical connotations and semantic qualities which each material bears. On each work of this new series, mostly in the lower left corner, a word or a phrase is inscribed. It is neither a title, nor a semantic or narrative indication, nor a slogan that stands out on the pictorial background. It is rather a side note, from which emerges all the evocative potential of the combinations between words and pictorial and material background.

Adel Abdessemed (1971, Constantine, Algeria) is a prominent figure of the international art scene. From drawing to video, from sculpture to installation, Adel probes in the wounds of our present. His work has been the subject, during the last thirty years, of numerous major solo exhibitions, at MoMA PS1 in New York, MIT List Art Center in Cambridge (Massachusetts), Magasin — Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble, at Parasol Unit in London, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Musée national d’Art Moderne — Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris for a retrospective, « Adel Abdessemed. Je suis Innocent » (2012), CAC in Málaga, or at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. Two major monographic exhibitions took place in 2018: Otchi Tchiornie at the Musée du Grand-Hornu in Belgium, and L’Antidote at the MAC Lyon.

Lawrence Weiner (American, b.1942) is a seminal contributor to the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s. His first artworks involved interventions (subversive pieces outside the art world which alter an existing work or space) on canvases, objects, and the environment. Weiner has shown at many museums and institutions such as Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2014); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2013); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA (2007); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2004); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2000); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA (1994); and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA (1990). He participated in documenta 5, 6, 7, and 13 (1972, 1977, 1982, 2012); the 36th, 41st, 50th and 55th Venice Biennales, Italy (1972, 1984, 2003, 2013); the 27th Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2006) and more.

Lawrence Weiner, IN TANDEM WITH THE SANDS, 2018, language + materials referred to

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Le risque est beau, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Concurence. L’ame du commerce, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Bataille. Toujours sanglante, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Désert. Image de l’infini où on ne peut pas vivre, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Été. Un été est toujours excetionnel, qu’il soit chaud ou froid, sec ou humide, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Creole. Vit dans un hamac, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, L’instant de la decision est une folie, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Palmier. Donne de la couleur locale, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 57 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Ich bin allein, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 115 x 85 x 3.5 cm

Adel Abdessemed and Lawrence Weiner, Un coeur simple, 2019, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Adel Abdessemed, Cocorico painting, Artistes. Gagnent des sommes folles mais les jettent par les fenêtres, 2017-2018, recycled printed metal, 115 x 85 x 3.5 cm