Popcorn at the MIMA, a group show featuring 15 artists who paint a colourful, offbeat, dreamlike and surreal picture of our society
The MIMA presents Popcorn, a group show featuring 15 artists who paint a colourful, offbeat and dreamlike picture of our society, with a dose of surrealism comparable to the one of the 1930s. The humorous experience is as much a guaranteed visual shock as it is an antidote to winter melancholy. Popcorn is also an atypical, very local window on contemporary art, bringing together young and experienced players.
Artists
Mrzyk and Moriceau, Pol-Edouard, Fabien Karp, Gary Card, Adèle Aproh, Elene Usdin, Michael Polakowski, Julien Colombier, Amandine Urruty, Delphine Somers, Antoine Carbonne, Davor Gromilovic, Nina Vandeweghe, Silio Durt
POPCORN
02.02 – 26.05
MIMA
https://www.mimamuseum.eu/
Press conference: 1 February 2024 at 11am
Please confirm your attendance to micha@clubparadis.be
I prefer the future to the past, because that's where I've decided to live for the rest of my life.
- Victor Hugo / Poet, writer, playwright, politician, 1802 - 1885
Taking an optimistic view of the future seems difficult at a time when our "black mirror" constantly exposes us to the image of a world in crisis. Yet there is a universal antidote to gloom: art. In all its forms and at all times, art has been an outlet for our anxieties. Under the banner of popcorn, the exhibition takes the temperature of an artistic scene that bears witness to our times from a rather surreal angle.
The title popcorn - kernels of corn popped and burst in the heat, sweetened or salted - is a metaphor for the exuberant aesthetics of the works on show. They express a penchant for the phantasmagorical, the caricatured and the dreamlike, departing from a faithful representation of the world. The exhibition leaves it up to the visitor to decide whether the work in front of them should be described as 'sweet', when it is an invitation to escape, 'salty' when it is highly critical, or 'sweet-salty' when irony predominates.
The exhibition also suggests a parallel between the art of today and that of the 1930s, the golden age of cinema when popcorn exploded to the sound of swing. Beyond the eras that separate the artists, it is possible to compare creation in the face of rising intolerance and the accumulation of clouds on the horizon. In this respect, Popcorn draws an imaginary link between the Surrealist (Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte...) and New Objectivity (Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz...) artistic movements, and the artists on show.
Last but not least, the range of 15 artists, most of them local, gives us another opportunity to broaden our view of young contemporary artists.
— Raphaël Cruyt, curator of the exhibition
Selection of images
