Artists: Alfred Johansen, Aston Ernest, Bernadette Corporation, Brian O’Doherty, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Charles Rosenthal, Claire Fontaine, Darko Maver, Eleanora Antinova, Emily Feather, Ernest T., Florence Hasard, Hennessy Youngman, Henry Codax, Herman Smit, Hubert Van Es, Jakup Auce, Janez Janša Janez Janša Janez Janša, Jim Jilborn, John Doe co., John Dogg, Justine Frank, Leo Josefstein, Lucie Fontaine, Martin Tupper, NV Panneel, Oksana Pasaiko, Philippe Thomas, Puppies Puppies, Reena Spaulings, Roberta Breitmore, Santo Sterne, Storm van Helsing, Suha Traboulsi, Various Artists, Vern Blosum
Exhibition title: Alias
Curated by: Valerie Verhack
The scenography by: Deborah Bowmann
Venue: M – Museum Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Date: March 15 – September 1, 2024
Photography: all images courtesy of the artists and M – Museum Leuven
Note: Press material is available here
Alias is the title of the new group exhibition that opens at M Leuven on 15 March. The subject: fictional artists. In five large galleries, M presents work by artists who have deliberately chosen to obscure their true identities, thereby shaking up our vision of reality.
By adopting a different identity, artists liberate themselves from gender or cultural issues, from art world rules and a capitalist system that turns names into brands. Alias brings together some 80 works from public and private collections, both national and international, to highlight this growing phenomenon in recent art history for the first time. Together, they illustrate the strategies that contemporary artists use to merge fiction and reality.
Strategies in fiction
The works in Alias are displayed across five exhibition spaces. Each of the galleries explores one of the different strategies that contemporary artists use to blur fiction and reality. Behind every fictional artist lies a specific context: it helps us determine how they deploy their fictitious creations and why. Does this new reality primarily relate to the art world or does it emerge in response to wider society?
“In the age of artificial intelligence, fake news and deepfake videos, we are now confronted with an urgent need to make critical distinctions between fact and fiction. But instead of drawing a strict line between illusion and reality, fictional artists allow them to coexist”, says Valerie Verhack, curator of the exhibition. “Fictional artists present their intricately spun fabrications as facts. They don’t leave it up to others to describe and interpret their artistic lives but control their own narrative.”
On the occasion of this exhibition, M is producing a publication in collaboration with Walther König Verlag, with the support of the Fondation Fernand Willame. The book launch takes place on 2 May at M with a ‘lecture performance’ by the British artist Ryan Gander.
