LIVE OR DIE Brigitte Kölle At first, it may seem startling to see the small but dense selection of works by the American artist Bruce Nauman (born 1941) alongside those by the Belgian Philippe Vandenberg (1952-2009). The artists never met one an other and they could not be more different in their choice of artistic media. Nauman’s oeuvre is extremely wide-ranging and includes sculptures, installations, performances, drawings, prints, videos, neon and soundscapes. In fact, the only thing that he has never done over the years is paint. And yet painting is what Philippe Vandenberg loved the most, although he also made a huge and impressive range of drawings, most of which can be found in his sketchbooks. What is it, then, that links these apparently divergent artists and their respective oeuvres? In the first instance, Nauman and Vandenberg share a common attitude towards their artistic practices. This involves a form of elaborating things, a process of exploration and investigation as an attempt to understand how we relate to the world and to each other. Neither artist is interested in promoting certainties or in creating a ‘nice’, cosy art. Their works are direct, raw, uncouth and finished just to the point where they enter the space as a kind of prelude or genesis to something. And this is when the real questions begin. There is rarely a simple form or a straightforward answer, and therefore in both Nauman’s and Vandenberg’s oeuvres
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