Manor Grunewald & Frederik Van Simaey at De Garage

Artists: Manor Grunewald & Frederik Van Simaey

Exhibition title: Nothingcomparestoyou

Venue: De Garage, Mechelen, Belgium

Date: June 24 – August 27, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and De Garage, Mechelen

With ‘nothingcomparestoyou’, Manor Grunewald and Frederik Van Simaey have conceived a duo-show reflecting on both each other’s and their own artistic practice, with references to art history. Instead of ‘killing their darlings’, destroying and questioning earlier attempts of ‘the arts’ to grasp the times we live in via new images, they embrace both and use earlier existing frameworks to mount their own on top.

This results in an exhibition which has a dynamic that fades in and out as you continue through the rooms. Very dense rooms blend in to quiet spatial experiences. The viewer is visually guided behind the scenes, into the crates themselves, then suddenly put on the stage. Reflecting and projecting on life itself is shown both literally and figurative. The hands of the artists are never far away, “painting their paintings, drinking their drinks”.

Manor Grunewald, born 1985, lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. Frederik Van Simaey, born 1979, lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.