MICHAEL VAN DEN ABEELE

There is hardly any stylistic continuity or mannerism in the diverse parallel activities of Michael Van den Abeele (°1974), going from post-surrealist drawing over animation-video to commodity objects and song-performances. But instead of being separated out from one another, they should be seen as embracing or instigating each other in an almost hysterical way. The animation-videos deal with sex & sci-fi nostalgia, religion, the sublime of cigarettes, the travelling romance of contemporary courier-companies and regression as constitutive for social cohesion. The drawings and paintings on the other hand seem puzzled about a certain paradox in the appearance of a ghost; the trans- parent appearance of a dead person, bound to return. Although transparent, we never get to see the inside – the guts – of the ghost, we merely look through its outer appearance. ‘It is very hard to keep both the illusion and the plane simultaneously’, the painter Malcolm Morley once stated. Michael Van den Abeele also works as co-curator of the Brussels based art centre Etablissement d’en face. (Source: The Flemish Institute for Visual, Audiovisual and Media Art)