39.4″x27.6″; paper, varnish, epoxy, acrylic on wooden board. Courtesy of the artist.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
David Crunelle: Hopelessness
at Zedes Art Gallery in Brussels, Belgium
17 November-23 December 2023
David Crunelle doesn’t believe in it anymore. Done for good, we might as well go out with a bang. In a world that’s on a downward spiral and has no intention of deviating from its trajectory, nothing really matters anymore. And since our civilization doesn’t seem to have any intention of ridding itself of its destructive manias, we might as well preserve its beauties, too, and create until the end.
Our society has manufactured images. By the ton, by the billions. So much so that what was so precious to humanity over the millennia has now lost almost all its value. Our garbage cans are full of this priceless trash, the traces of our departed, of outdated beauties once popular.
39.4″x27.6″; paper, varnish, epoxy, acrylic on wooden board. Courtesy of the artist.
David Crunelle, an avid ragpicker of past splendors, uses them to recreate the beautiful–dare we say it–works destined to cast a final glow, a moment, before their disappearance in the blaze of a dying world.
To do this, he constructs his works like quilts, taking up craft patterns as complex as they are underestimated, seeking to push them, technically, ever further. He inserts salvaged images, like photopolymer holograms, forgotten survivors of a bygone past, whose production has long since ceased.
It’s no longer time to hope, fight or cry. It’s time to die in style, holding on to images, objects, the fascination of kaleidoscopes and holographic magic until the very end. In a world that is self-destructing, David Crunelle recomposes what we have loved and admired so much. He turns them into derisory amulets that will accompany us to the grave. Will they ever bear witness to what we once were? That would be too much to hope for. But here they are. We look at them, and perhaps we suffer a little less. That’s already something.
(text adapted from material provided by the artist)
INFORMATION
Zedes Art Gallery
Rue Paul Lautersstraat, 36
1050 Brussels, Belgium
+32 2 646 00 04
Hours:
Wednesday-Friday, Noon-6PM
Saturday, 2-6PM
and by appointment