JAN FABRE. LOYALTY AND VANITY

Start date: 14/12/2018

End date: 28/02/2019

Location: Busan, South Korea / 2 venues: Gallery 604 + Project B6

Curator(s): Joanna De Vos

Solo Exhibition

Gallery 604 and Project B6 are pleased to present the solo exhibition of Jan Fabre, Loyalty and Vanity.  This exhibition, curated by Joanna De Vos, features new works by Jan Fabre, combined with historic and recent works. The main theme of this exhibition, ‘Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas’ springs from a verse from the Bible: ‘In vain and in vain, all is vanity’. Everything that has life leads to death, and all is fleeting and inseparable with life. Jan Fabre strives to imbue all matter with a soul but, at the same time, he is constantly seeking confrontation with vanity, or the changing face of existence.

The reversal, the doubling/mirroring and the playing with opposites is amply demonstrated in this exhibition. Everything becomes one through Jan Fabre’s consistent application of this double inversion -of materials as well as symbols-. Death is life, life is death, man is animal, animal is human, bone is flesh, flesh is bone, illusion is reality, reality is illusion, material is spiritual, spiritual is material. Jan Fabre restores the credibility of death in an exhibition about loyalty and transience.

As part of this exhibition, ‘The man measuring the clouds’ will be exhibited’ for three months, installed at ‘Haeundae the Bay 101. This bronze work will be the second installment in Asia following Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Art in Japan and will be a special edition for Busan.