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Jeroen Jongeleen at Harlan Levey Projects 1080

October 4, 2021

Artist: Jeroen Jongeleen

Exhibition title: Running in Circles III/ Movement and Politics In The Streets Of My City

Venue: Harlan Levey Projects 1080, Brussels, Belgium

Date: September 9 – December 18, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels

‘Like a 21st century Richard Long on steroids.’
Edo Dijksterhuis (2020)

During Brussels Gallery Weekend 2021, Harlan Levey Projects proudly presents Running in Circles III/ Movement and Politics In The Streets Of My City, Jeroen Jongeleen’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will extend between both of the gallery’s Brussels venues.

Building on infuences from Futurism to Fluxus and the Situationist International, Jongeleen turns against consumerism and over-regulated society by interrupting public space through ephemeral interventions and actions. Utilizing means and visual forms associated with guerilla protest – grafti, stickers, placard cut-outs, tape, trash, appropriated texts, though frst and foremost his body – his interventions draw attention to a particular form of militant activism while questioning the nature, value and transformative potential of artistic production in society. He leaves traces in the urban landscape which he subsequently documents with photographs and flms. With these repetitive interventions, the artist promotes the free use of public space and questions the way corporate infuence, advertising, architecture and public policy limit and direct a citizens’ behavior. Jongeleen describes his motivation to create art as not about ‘decoration or making people happy, but about free speech and movement, about opposition as the essence of a truly vibrant democratic society’. His politically motivated work therefore sets out to illustrate the power and the dynamics of public space, while ofering a utopian vision for the potential citizen user of tomorrow.

When invited to give an artist talk at Harlan Levey Projects in 2014, Jongeleen decided to run 124km from his studio in Rotterdam to the space in Brussels, illustrating the efort it takes to bring an idea from the studio into the public arena. Following the epic journey, the traces and drawings made from the soles of his feet moved to the center of his practice. Long distance and ultra long distance runs result in straight lines, fgurative etchings that pay tribute to artistic infuences, and the poetic gesture of running in circles over and over again. These runs leave traces on an eclectic array of areas throughout the city; rooftops, construction sites, parking lots, bridges, beaches and more, ofering insight into soil, sand and the general quality of the ground around urban spaces from no-go zones to developer’s dream plots. This body of work refects other infuences from Conceptual Land Art interventions like those of Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Robert Smithson, as well as the mundane repetitive works of Bruce Nauman and the endurance performances of Marina Abramović & Ulay.

In 2020 and 2021, Jongeleen created two bodies of work during lockdown (The Street as a Forum for Democracy and Running in Circles), which were selected for the Brutus Prize, initiated by Joep van Lieshout to stimulate and celebrate artistic talent that ofers new perspectives on art and society. These works were also the subject of an exhibition at Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam and will be the focus of his exhibition at Harlan Levey Projects.

Jongeleen’s running works are in numerous private and public collections, including those of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Voorlinden Museum, and the Progressive Art Collection.

Jeroen Jongeleen, exhibition view Running in Circles III / Movement and Politics in the Streets of My City, HLP 1080, 2021

Jeroen Jongeleen, installation view Angled, 2021, Running in Circles III / Movement and Politics in the Streets of My City, HLP 1080, 2021

Jeroen Jongeleen, installation view The Street as a Forum for Democracy (Fukushima), 2021, Running in Circles III / Movement and Politics in the Streets of My City, HLP 1080, 2021

Jeroen Jongeleen, installation view The Street as a Forum for Democracy (Moonshots), 2021, Running in Circles III / Movement and Politics in the Streets of My City, HLP 1080, 2021

Jeroen Jongeleen, installation view Running a Triangle (Molenbeek), 2021, Running in Circles III / Movement and Politics in the Streets of My City, HLP 1080, 2021