M HKA Ensembles

POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE

This subject entered the discussion in relation to the works of Guy Mees and Rena Papaspyrou, Rustam Khalfin & Yuliya Tikhonova.

Their works bring direct experience in the forefront -as opposed to distantiated observation. In this way they lure the viewer into an intuitive position. These are not artworks to look at but art that proposes us how to see, to optically feel and to behold rather than read the image as a surface willed with signifiers. They trust that our gaze is endowed with a haptic sensibility that may retrace the experiences of the eye of the artist.

The Imaginary Ballet of Mees is a late variation of his classical works approaching colour and shape in the most fragile and powerless way imaginable, simply with pieces of coloured paper. In Water to the water Mees theorizes his vision of art as a finely distinct area within the wider world. Papaspyrou’s almost invisible penciled shadows alter the image of an urban ruin which through a public displacement enters the gallery space. Khalfin focuses on the haptic gaze in two videos with Julyia Thikonova that are based upon Chinese stories about Kazakh nomads.

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