M HKA Ensembles

Photography

Collection: (c) Jacques Charlier, Courtesy Nadja Vilenne.

In Ypres, for the exhibition Kunst in/als vraag (Art Questioned/As a Question) he [Jacques Charlier] has just shown 576 photos of openings, spread over two years, on which often the same figures from the Belgian art scene are to be seen in – time and again – similar environments, situations, attitudes. One cannot think of a more ironic commentary on this fauna than to dryly expose its mundane activity.

Here too, Charlier, just as in [the Provincial Technical Department], is at the same time actor and spectator. He is integrated into the environment, but he also takes his distance from it, he looks at it with a critical eye – not really in a destructive, rather in an understanding and amused way, yet also with sufficient sarcasm. He knows that, after all, he is part of it, whether he likes it or not, and so his attitude is also largely one of self-mockery.

Marc Callewaert, Een Andere Charlier: Van de openbare werken naar de “Plinthure”, 1981