Aguila de Oro hosts a kind of indoor park: life-size sculptures of children in everyday poses, silent, eyes closed, in a moment of high concentration. Among several boys figures is a girl lying on a bed that floats over a wooden raft – the title sculpture of the exhibition. In the projection room artist’s most recent film ‘The Girl’ (2017) lets the viewer follow a fourteen-year-old girl living an isolated existence in an old trailer near a lake, a highway and a dark forest. Op de Beeck also presents a large collection of black and white photos. Spreaded through the exhibition’s space exploring the many ways in which an image can be staged.
Hans Op de Beeck was born in Turnhout (Belgium) in 1969. He lives and works in Brussels. He produces large-scale immersive installations, films, sculptures, photographs, drawings, paintings and texts. This year (2018) he wrote and directed his first work for the theatre, ‘Nach dem Fest, for the Schauspiel’ Frankfurt, also producing the sets, music and costumes. His work is a reflection on our complex society and the universal questions of mortality and meaning. He stimulates the viewers’ senses, and invites to really experience the image. Op de Beeck has shown his work extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world. His work has been invited for the Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, CN; the Venice Biennale, Venice, IT; the Singapore Biennale, Singapore, SG; the Aichi Triennale, Aichi, JP; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, IN; Art Summer University, Tate Modern, London, GB; Art Basel Miami Beach, and many other art events. He has had substantial institutional solo shows at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art of The Hague; Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, ES; Screen Space, Melbourne AU; Espace 104, Paris; the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Kunstverein Hannover; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, DE MOCA Cleveland, OH, US; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, D; Paris; Kunstraum Dornbirn, Dornbirn, AU Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, DE.