Daniel Buren in the Wide White Space Gallery

Jef Cornelis
,
BE
,
1971
,
16mm
,
b&w
,
6'

“The young French artist Daniel Buren is internationally known for an artistic production that fundamentally questions all the usual ideas about all things artistic. At the Sixth International Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, his work was almost consistently boycotted by the great masters of the contemporary avant-garde. Daniel Buren has also written extensively and very theoretically about his work, which people are able to say very little about at first sight. It always repeats the same simple pattern.” These are the first sentences of this short film, broadcast by the Flemish-language Belgian broadcasting Corporation on 20 to May 1971, for the occasion of the second exhibition that Daniel Buren produced for the programme of the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp.

Rio Ronse

Robbrecht Desmet
,
BE
,
2013
,
16mm
,
colour
,
28'

“Over a period of five years, Desmet made four films – although it could be three or five – in which he treads in the footsteps of another artist: those of Paul Cézanne as he painted Mont Sainte-Victoire and those of Bart Lodewijks as he was making chalk drawings in the cities. For the first two films – those that might also be three films – he travelled to Provence. For the last two – which are actually one – he went to Rio and to Ronse. These changes of location are important, as is his attention to the material: the filmmaker's reel of 16mm film, the attention to motion, sound and text in his images – those of the painter and the draftsman, the attention to textures and structures in their work. It is all fuel for a filmmaker who films like a critic: like a film critic and, through the choice of his subject, like an art critic.” (Pieter van Bogaert)

Jaime

Antonio Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
,
PT
,
1974
,
35mm
,
colour
,
35'

“A  film about a madman. Filmed in a “hospital for crazy people” in Lisbon, which at that time (the mid-Seventies) was a place that was half prison, half wild, that we didn’t talk about. Jaime, the character who gave the film its title, made quite beautiful and spectacular drawings. The unusual thing is that they were made with red, green and blue biros. This technique with the primary colours added to the aesthetic interest. From this starting point, António Reis directed a surprising and quite surrealist film that stands apart from his usual work. A beautiful artist’s portrait conceived in a very modern manner, like a collage, in the same style subsequently employed by André S. Labarthe.” (Pedro Costa)