In response to the sad passing of my grandmother in February 2015 an in memoriam for a journey never taken or never intended to be taken by her, the work Pôle Nord from 2009 by Sophie Calle (1953). This wistful but beautiful work is about Calle’s own mother. The latter dr..

The alphabet forms the new focus of several projects of Flemish artist Kelly Schacht (1983). Lately she investigates the functionality of language and monstration. She has established her own abecedary. An abecedary can be described as a kind of poem of which the successi..

No snowy landscape of mountains, ice skating men and women, Christmas trees and presents. Forget Bruegel, Avercamp, Friedrich. Instead a coolly spartan atmosphere with a bright white candle. Christmas evoked by German artist Gerhard Richter (1932) is not your usual tradit..

Perhaps you’ve never heard of it. Perhaps you have. Actually I haven’t, but a manuscript caught my eye after reading the column of Dutch culture critic Bianca Stigter*. She discussed in her column the book Klaerlightende spiegel der verf konst (translated literally as: ‘c..

The movements of the flood line during seven days, presented in a loop. The video Il fait dimanche sur la mer (2009) of the Belgian artist Lili Dujourie (1941) is just that. Filmed at location in Ostend, Belgium, it deals with the intertwining between nature and culture, ..

‘When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botany of death is what we call culture’. It is with this statement that the for its time critical film Les statues meurent aussi (1953) by Alain Resnais (1922-2014) and Chris Marker (1921-2012) beg..