Timed Auction Deweer Gallery Estate
Saturday April 27 until Saturday June 1 at 10 AM (CET)
Gallery De Vuyst is organizing an important Timed Auction on Saturday, June 1, with works from the collection of Deweer Gallery Estate.
The auction includes a selection of 158 sculptures, installations, paintings, drawings, photographs and graphics by, among others, Michaël Aerts, Emmanuelle Antille, Stephan Balkenhol, Sergey Bratkov, Keith Brumberg, Jean-Pierre Bruneaud, Johannes Brus, Tony Cragg, Enzo Cucchi, Jan De Cock, Franky Deconinck, Frank Dornseif, Endart, Jan Fabre, Christoph Fink, Günther Förg, Melissa Gordon, Albert Hien, Klaus Jung, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Chiurai Kudzanai, Thomas Lange, Matthieu Laurette, Aernout Mik, Josef Felix Müller, Panamarenko, Bernhard Prinz, Jaap Schlee, Klaus Simon, Koen Vanmechelen, Robin Winters, Norbert Witzgall
Highlights
From 1979 to 2019, Deweer Gallery was a leading gallery specialized in international and Belgian contemporary art.
In the early 1980s, Deweer Gallery was the first Belgian gallery to introduce the German Neue Wilde and the Italian Transavanguardia. At the same time, they gallery also took on the promotion of contemporary Belgian artists. Panamarenko first exhibited there in 1983 and Jan Fabre has shown every important chapter of his visual art practice in solo shows since 1985.
From the second half of the 1980s on, the gallery represented Stephan Balkenhol and in the 1990s Deweer presented multiple solo exhibitions by a number of internationally acclaimed artists, including Tony Cragg, Günther Förg, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov,
The new millennium began with the introduction of the work of Koen Vanmechelen and also saw the start of a series of collaborations with new artists, both more established names such as Mathieu Laurette, Sergey Bratkow, and Jan De Cock as well as the younger generation such as Michaël Aerts, Norbert Witzgall, Melissa Gordon ,
Panamarenko
Lot nr. 64 Panamarenko
IJSVOGEL (2004)
Plexiglass, metal, steel wire, tape, nylon
approx. 260 x 900 x 400 cm
Est. €320,000 - 400,000
Because it is something more than a toy
Panamarenko creates constructions of a deceptive simplicity. His equipment may often lack more essential elements than they possess, but the few features they do possess are more than sufficient to create a feeling of reliability and efficiency. This applies even more to the graceful "IJsvogel". This feather-light aircraft made of transparent plexiglass has small flappers at both ends of the wings, indicated with a red cross. This fragile work may be too brittle to ever be released into the air, but Panamarenko attributes special properties to it. "This work is simply entertainment. No foolish artistic statements should be made about it. It is entertainment, but at the end it gains depth, because it tells me something, because it speaks. Because it is something more than a toy, because it is a has a kind of power, an energy. And if that is the case, then I exhibit it."
"Panamarenko Universum" M HKA, Antwerp 2014-2015, cat. p. 88
Jan Fabre
Lot nr. 65 Jan Fabre
UMBRACULUM (2001)
37 objects: wire, bones, shield wings of jewel beetles on object, and 2 cd's
Est. € 400.000 - 600.000
As an early peak of his thoughts on beauty and decay, on the vulnerability of humanity, and on the role of the artist as a timeless warrior, "Umbraculum" is one of the most crucial and powerful installations Jan Fabre created in the 1990s.
Deweer Gallery, exh. cat.
"Umbraculum, a Latin term meaning 'a place in the shade where one can work and think, far away from the obligations of everyday life' ... The bone sculptures depict monks, in the words of the artist 'spiritual travellers'. By analogy with the jewel beetle, this figure wears an external skeleton (exo-skeleton): a hard, impregnable armour instead of soft human skin, which offers maximal protection against possible wounds. These are bodies which give shape to a future portrayal of humanity ... The accessories - crutches, wheelchairs and walking frames - act as additional protheses, guarantees for the eternity of the spiritual bodies."
Barbara De Coninck, director of exhibitions at ANGELOS Quote on Instagram (angelos_janfabre)
Lot nr. 35 Jan Fabre
THE MEDIUM (BED) (1979)
Installation - Metal bed, mattress, sheets and pillow - 125 x 192 x 109 cm (frame) - Sheets and pillow colored with blue Bic ballpoint
Est. €130,000 - 180,000
A bed frequently appears as a motif in Jan Fabre's oeuvre. And Fabre is known to often suffer from insomnia. But "The Medium" (1979) is one of the earliest and most enigmatic, and perhaps precisely for that reason, one of the most poetic objects in Fabre's visual work.
Sculpture or emancipated drawing? Does unusual work, to say the least, represent a bed? A lectern or a reading stand? Made from a meager metal bed of which two legs have been made longer. On one side, they are lower, or higher if you prefer, than on the other side. What kind of bed is this, clearly not conceived to offer someone a night's rest? This is more of a bed where we can sit down. Like when we sit at a drawing or writing table. Not that writing or drawing will be easy on the yielding sheets and docile mattress. This is a bed that is made for thinking, that calls for thought, so that it no longer remains a bed. It is made for meditation.
"The Medium" (1979) is a piece of furniture that has become sculpture. The bed no longer a bed. Mattress and pillow, wrapped in blue-colored sheets, float as solid blue in a totally open space, due to the unbalanced arrangement of the whole. "The Medium", as a historicized bed, demarcates, calmly and confidently, the beginning and end of every journey through that space.
Jo Coucke, in Deweer Gallery, exh. cat.
Tony Cragg
Lot nr. 40 Tony Cragg
FAST PARTICLES (1995)
Various materials, paraffin
280 x 168 x 280 cm
Est. € 95.000 - 120.000
The energy of a man engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for the puck
In “Fast particles”, Tony Cragg aligns with one of his early principles, creating sculptures from seemingly worthless found materials, and with his well-known plastic mosaics from the 1980s, albeit this time the artist chooses a three-dimensional approach. Found objects randomly assembled on wooden panels are entirely covered with liquid wax. It doesn't take much imagination to see this wax layer as a deposit of wintry frost. A sensation that perfectly corresponds to the motif of the ice hockey players.
Deweer Art Gallery, 1995, exh. cat
A layer of wax, almost like a skin, covers the mix of recycled domestic and industrial materials that make up Fast Particles, 1994 ...
The dynamic images transmit all the force of athletes engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for the puck or racing along the rink.
Website Castello di Rivoli - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy
Koen Vanmechelen
Lot nr. 127 Koen Vanmechelen
VIRTUAL MECHELSE FIGHTERS (2005)
Installation.
1 object: gold on brass on polyamide - 1 inkjetprint on canvas, aluminium and neon - Video projection - 4 Lambda prints between plexiglass - 4 Duratrans on plexiglass in lightbox
Lightbox: 31 x 41 x 13 cm (each)
Table (glass and iron)
Est. € 48.000 – 60.000
Koen Vanmechelen is - and this may sound strange at first - not so much interested in the chicken as in the crossbreeding. In other words, the underlying concept of crossing two antithetical elements to create a synthesis, that is the bottom line of Koen Vanmechelen's artistic work. In addition to the crossings of chicken breeds, other crossings are conceivable and mentionable. Such as interdisciplinary artistic intersections, such as the crossing between artistic and scientific principles, or the crossing between artistic and societal worlds. In our postmodern times, we can therefore undoubtedly call Koen Vanmechelen a Renaissance artist, a "homo universalis."
Jo Coucke, in Deweer Art Gallery exh. cat.
Enzo Cucchi
Lot nr. 88 Enzo Cucchi
SENZA TITOLO (1986)
2 delen – Dry pigment in cement and metal
289,6 x 129,6 x 17.4 cm (2x)
Est. € 90.000 - 120.000
According to Enzo Cucchi and the artists of the Italian Transavanguardia, the avant-garde that ruled up until the 1970s has been far to cerebral. Hence the term transavanguardia. Cucchi especially wants to distance himself from an interpretation of the world that is too much inspired by the brain, in order to unlock more irrational energy. He therefore creates images and objects that seek to restore myth as an important guiding element for humanity. “Myths are the only truth we have on rearth”, he states. Therefore, it is most valuable to tap into the ancient European and Italian cultural sources again.
This two-part work 'Senza titolo' was first exhibited at Cucchi's first retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1986.
Deweer Art Gallery, exh. cat.