from March 7 to June 4 2017
"Roger Ballen and Hans Lemmen"
Roger Ballen and Hans Lemmen
Between Roger Ballen, a major photographer on the international scene, and Hans Lemmen, a draughtsman who is masterfully inspired by the issues related to representations of nature, there is an obvious community of imagination that has led them to work together, erasing the distance that separates them. In the Netherlands, Hans Lemmen tears apart Roger Ballen's photographs. He completes the fragments thus obtained or inserts them into graphic compositions. Thousands of miles away, Roger Ballen uses some of Hans Lemmen's drawings to create installations that will be photographed in turn.
(Automatically translated with Google Translate)
The exhibition at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature allows visitors to follow the creative processes of the two artists. The artists themselves, represented by two life-size seated figures with animal eyes, welcome visitors through an installation created with four hands. They are seated in the first room, accompanied by their pets and surrounded by a contemporary cave painting: a drawing that runs along the four walls and the floor of the room. The second part of the exhibition, devoted to personal and individual works, precedes the unpublished graphic works born of the collaboration between Ballen and Lemmen, based on the principle of reciprocal inclusion and borrowing. To conclude the exhibition, a video, directed by Saskia Vredeveld, documents the production of these works, which are very foreign to their respective practices, demonstrating the extent to which art is nourished by constraints such as the one defined here.
Doesn't each of them pursue in his own way a contestation of the materialist thinking that isolates man and, in the long run, threatens his survival?
This exhibition, co-produced by the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, will be presented there in 2018.
SCREENING ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29 AT 7:30 PM
ROGER BALLEN'S OUTLAND
Directed by Ben Jay Crossman and Roger Ballen (4'50, 2015)
FOLLOWING OBSERVATION II
Directed by Hans Lemmen, composer: Armeno Alberts (15′, 2015)
INTERVIEW WITH ROGER BALLEN AND HANS LEMMEN FOR THE EXHIBITION "UNLEASHED"
Roger Ballen:
"I think the purpose of art has always been for me to help people come to terms with their own repressions, which has been the main issue and problem of society since the first day men decided to live together...
That's why animals are present in my photographs, and I think my works look for the animal at the heart of the human mind, the tipping point where a man turns into an animal..."
Hans Lemmen:
"This is the most difficult thing I have ever faced in my career. Until the last moment, I didn't know if it would be possible to combine photographs and drawings. We are simply animals. We are animals with, admittedly, a more developed brain. "
"Roger Ballen and Hans Lemmen, Unleashed
Director: Saskia Vredeveld.
Interview by Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge
Editing and sound design: Jandries Groenendijk.
Production: Peacefield Films
6'13 "
