NICK ERVINCK GNI T BG 2006 — FOTO ©TOM DE VISSCHER KRIJN DE KONING WORK FOR SERGE LEBORGNE GALLERY, PARIS
tion. Koos Flinterman speaks of a sort of “concentration” when the artist or designer understands the importance of physical presence and visualisation. This is nicely expressed in what might be considered a summary of or introduction to the exhibition: Koen Vanmechelen’s Cosmopolitan Chicken Project in the CIAP. Since 2000 Koen Vanmechelen has been working intensively on a project in which chickens are being crossbred around the world. There are crossbreeds ranging from the Mechelen Bresse, created by crossing a Mechelen Koekoek with a Poulet de Bresse, to new generations created through the process of gene mixing. And this is a SuperStory about the development of what Koen Vanmechelen calls a ‘super bastard’, a ‘cast iron cosmopolitan chicken created by gene mixing’. The project, which he sees as a metaphor for the importance of multiculturalism, contains an element in which he works with scientists. However, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is more than a genetic experiment. The visual output is also an essential component. Photographs of the various generations of chickens, and installations in which glass eggs are incubated as though in a laboratory of the future, make it clear that in his project Koen Vanmechelen is also concentrating on a physical dimension. Vanmechelen uses glass and in so doing combines techniques borrowed from several cultures and several masters (so again, no “pure breeding” here). With this he confirms what Guus Beumer and Louise Schouwenberg call in their essay the narrative power of traditional techniques; traditional techniques “which, independently of any meaning ascribed by the designs, have in themselves a wealth of meanings and references.” The glass chickens refer to a virtual crossbreed, to a future which might be completely artificial but will, in any case, be genetically stratified. Nick Ervinck also works digitally and traditionally, using real materials. Fascinated by science fiction and architecture, he builds imaginary worlds which exist in digital and physical form. “My digital prints offer a glimpse of a digital world or, equally, an alternative reality. These glimpses reveal the possibilities opened up by my research in which sculptural elements constantly place themselves in new compositions and meanings.”03 The surreal worlds are translated into hand-made sculptures in which materials are tested for their ability or inability to form real or virtual images. “The more I worked in the virtual world the bigger my urge to place this virtual world back in reality and experience it physically. And the urge to make these images as perfect and clean as possible in reality, in the way they were designed virtually. Going in search of the near inhuman, the divine, an object which is almost not of our world, something extra terrestrial.”