Sharon Van Overmeiren at Damien and the love guru

Artist: Sharon Van Overmeiren

Exhibition title: The Happy Inn

Venue: Damien and the love guru, Brussels, Belgium

Date: June 25 – July 10, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Damien and the love guru

As she is rounding off her six months’ Residence Programme in WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Sharon Van Overmeiren’s (°1985, Antwerp, Belgium) research focuses on the significance and the common lineage of objects displayed in various compositions, in particular the relationship and intersection between objects and their natural, metaphysical expression. Objects are transformed into sculptures and identi- fied as functional entities.

The common man has a voice in “The Happy Inn”, where ex- istential issues are being examined and underlying humour is lurking right around the corner. Science, education, knowledge, justification, logic, truth, beliefs and the unknown are just a few examples of topics that are being questioned and com- pared to one another. The functioning of the human mind as an inevitable mechanism that connects past, present and future is a recurring subject in Van Overmeiren’s practice, which she explores not only by using found footage that she manipu- lates and reshapes through various mediums such as ceramic sculptures, video, drawings and installations. The universe of all these compounded objects emerges from the artist’s mind- set and they are assembled in an ordered system resembling a matrix. The elements or entries she alludes to in the Happy Inn refer to mental models that are inhabited by odd creatures.

Van Overmeiren creates various possibilities for different kinds of perception by creating and mixing different moods and states of mind. In her sculptural work physical objects appear to exist in novel contexts or settings. Do artefacts need to be optimistic? It is a fairly complex task to try and figure out where the optimism may lie, as the object can be perceived as disturbing but at the same time transmit a positive and exhila- rating effect.

Sharon Van Overmeiren has a background in Visual Arts, with a specialization in Sculpture, at the Sint-Lukas School of Arts in Brussels (2008 – 2009), where exploration of spatiality and three-dimensionality combined with a variety of materials and working methods were introduced. Ultimately adopting a more experimental approach to the tradition of sculpture, she com- pleted her Masters degree In Situ3 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2009 – 2013). During the same period she developed a particular interest in Scenography, which she pursued parallel with liberal arts studies In Situ3. At the previ- ous edition of Art Brussels (2015), the multidisciplinary artist participated in an exhibition project entitled «120 Minutes », a performative sculpture in the shape of an exhibition project. In 2015 Van Overmeiren presented an installation which she baptized « Shuffle Woe » that consisted of a wooden wall- sized futuristic display case, ceramic pastel-coloured lustrous objects, a sound sculpture and a video projection accompanied by geometric sculptures – in her first solo show at Annie Gen- tils Gallery in Antwerp. Group exhibitions include « De Vierkan- tigste rechthoek » (2014) at Kunsthal KAdE Amersfoort and « Who’s Next » (2009) curated by Belgian painter Koen van den Broek. Van Overmeiren received the first prize for LabO, a mul- tidisciplinary arts project initiated by ChampdAction and deSin- gel that was shown in a presentation entitled « Time Canvas » (2013) at M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. « Ignorance is Strength » (2014), an installation created for the display of Hunting & Collecting in Brussels, was a collabora- tion between the artist Filip Vervaet and Van Overmeiren. The objects in the installation were displayed in a certain sce- nography, with a utopian image in a mythical rendering, while clues hinted at a political critique.