photo: Adrian Hauwaert
SURPLUS reverted
at Super Dakota, Brussels, 9th June-16th July 2022
The show is a presentation of various works from the SURPLUS scope: texts and waste mediated onto various surfaces. It investigates the politics of fashion and consumer desires while pointing to the mechanisms of the art market. The title is taken from SURPLUS series with the subheading reverted to undermine the common definition of what an art show is.
Located on the lower floor of the building with restricted access and in the time of an ongoing exhibition of another artist presented on the street level, SURPLUS reversed refers to practices of protest occupation, squatting, and virusing more than to a traditional exhibition. Hidden from the eyes of inattentive visitors, yet teased in a window display, it plays with a marketing strategy of speak-easy, a secret, exclusive space for the selected group of audience.
The semi-fashion pieces of the questionable source are to be sculpted with construction pipes and hiking strings to create a visual and tactile overdose of confusing slogans, colors, and consumer goods, to be traded and tried out. By fitting SURPLUS garments, one can try on different views, identities, and contents printed on top of them, and reflect upon absurdities of late capitalist consumerism.
