29.08–08.11.2015
MECHELEN
Visiting CONTOUR is an equally relaxing and exciting way of discovering contemporary international visual art. The Biennale presents film, video, installation-art and performances at special locations in the city of Mechelen.
CONTOUR 7, a Moving Image Biennale, is dedicated to humanist and statesman Thomas More. Regarded by many as a martyr and by some as a monster, perhaps even as a philosopher or artist. Certainly he was a brilliant fool, ahead of his time. It was while visiting Flanders – he stopped through Mechelen – in the summer of 1515 that he wrote the bulk of his book on the ideal commonwealth, the island of Utopia.
CONTOUR 7 presents work by over twenty international artists, spread across several venues in the City of Mechelen. All the works on show, many of them new productions, have in common the fact that they are inspired by utopias, monsters and martyrs, past and present.
THEME
CONTOUR 7 is dedicated to the humanist, statesman and martyr Thomas More. Fooling Utopia, the Biennale’s motto, is inspired by Utopia (1516), More’s most famous book, and by In Praise of Folly (1511), which Desiderius Erasmus dedicated to his friend, Thomas More. The motto seems to capture the original spirit with which these two friends dealt with the reality of their time, and it is a reflection of the artistic practices and strategies on display throughout CONTOUR 7.
CONTOUR 7 presents work by over twenty artists who have been invited to focus on two themes: Fooling Utopia and Monsters, Martyrs & Media. Both are inspired by the human as well as the intellectual trajectory that led Thomas More to Mechelen exactly five hundred years ago.
The campaign image of CONTOUR 7, a deep blue vortex, depicts the movements in play between the two themes of the Biennale.
ARTISTS
AaBbPp / A Dog Republic and RAM Radioartemobile / Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen / Andrea Büttner / Jan Fabre / Michael Fliri / Chiara Fumai / Johan Grimonprez / Fabrice Hyber / Rabih Mroué / Ana Prvacki / Michael Rakowitz / Gilad Ratman / Albert Serra / Slavs and Tatars / Nedko Solakov / Javier Téllez / Grazia Toderi / An van. Dienderen / Angel Vergara / Gilberto Zorio
(PR: Contour7, www.contour7.be)