Tradition Doesn’t Graduate at KOMPLOT / Brussels

Tradition Doesn’t Graduate / Curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk and KOMPLOT

The exhibiting of a group constantly becoming but never quite arriving, with Bernardus Baldus, A.M. Dumitran, Maika Garnica, Carl Haase, Yvonne Lake, Wannes Missotten, An Onghena, Tyagi Pallav, Hanne Van Dyck, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Ersi Varveri, sought after conjointly with peers from Brussels: After Howl, Henry Andersen, Lény Bernay, Louise Boghossian, Jonathan Boutefeu, Ailsa Cavers, Hugo Dietür, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Margaux Schwarz, Britt Sprogis, Yaozheng Tan.

Exhibition 28 May - 25 June 2016

KOMPLOT
Hopstraat 63 rue du Houblon, 1000 Brussels
http://www.kmplt.be/






































Regardless of who turns pro and pursues a career in the arts, or drops the bar and decides to play ones cards elsewhere, the graduate course will continue on the same level by consolidating new players on the field. No institution without transformation? Tradition doesnt graduate. From the homogenous gloss of the arts course looming over its students-cum-artists, to its recovery in the key of a heterogenous and diversified art field, the exhibition Tradition Doesnt Graduate expands on the social fabric and dynamic of a group on the verge of graduation, vis-à-vis the structuring principles of the course, its registry of promise, and the idea of forming a collective that is best seen as a porous and fragmenting whole, held together by the course as a formative and generative template. Having landed in Brussels at KOMPLOT, from Antwerp, the group embarks on a collective and joint effort to unpack their works for the charged moment of graduation, whilst simultaneously wanting to maintain and mark their own position in the scheme of things. A diplomatic affair, to say the least. What does it mean to become a group, bound together for a given time, in the ambiguous and temporal vacuum of a graduate course? What does it entail to exhibit (as) a group? Joint by an equal number of peers from Brussels, Tradition Doesnt Graduate seeks to unfold the lines of thought, residues, marks and traces, acts of confrontation and resistance that rise by folding and being brought together. Here, ideas of ongoing feedback, call and response, checks and balances rise to the fore, between ones respective artistic practices and the voices of the revolving group members, the surrounding environment and the different temporalities implied.This publication serves to illustrate and exemplify the collective effort and movement undertaken by the twenty-two artists presented in the exhibition. Its product that of peaceful co-habitation whilst marking ones presence in the world might be read in the margins and in-between the works. Where various material aesthetics, registers and scales come to clash, complement and enhance each other, where research interests, subjects and artistic approaches diverge. In short, from individual fieldwork-taking to a formation of a patchwork of social and material relations. A publication as another line on your CV, as a remnant of an instance past, as a ghost of a previous state, as a piece of evidence in light of seizing that prospective opportunityAs we will all continue to be upcoming, and constantly becoming but never quite arriving. For the good of practice! Even if tradition doesnt seem to graduate!