CROXHAPOX, A NEW BEGINNING - Orbus Pictus 3 by Edwin Carels in vzw Croxhapox, Aannemersstraat 54, 9040 Sint-Amandsberg. Open Fr. to Su. 2 till 8 pm. - Till 5 February. GENT - They started some five years ago in a squatters' house at Beverhoutplein, close to Sint-Jacobs' church. Very modest. We visited two exhibitions then, one an installation of Sjoerd Paridaen and the other one with small photos by Daniël Libens, both professors at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gent. We als reviewed them and, if we are no mistaken, not even negatively. After the building was taken down, de vzw organised a number of less sedentory projects: En passant in (shop)windows, and an action with copy-art. They now have a small but inviting place in the basement of a house in Aannemersstraat in Gent.
Edwin Carels (De andere cinema) has wrapped up practically the whole space. Wrapped newspapers are on the floor, ghostly photos from a paper are at the ceiling. A projector put an image on a big board: the enlarged image of a piece of skin stuck to the lens. Incredibly personal but at the same time looking incredibly very impersonal: the structure of the human skin simply forms a pattern on the pane, a pattern not unlike the ones used in newspaper pictures which, if you look closely enough, only consist of tiny dots. This installation balances at the border between the banality of an obvious meaning (like the newspaper photos) and the tangible loss of meaning (de projected skin). Because you can really feel the loss of meaning the desire rises to starts looking for it again, to ask yourself what is being said - while, paper clippings and TV-images as such, you pass without noticing. Carels' staging sometimes has a tendency to be to emphaticly explaining, but it contains certainly enough elements which pierce through. / Meanwhile Hans van Heirseele already announces his newest plans: the next exhibition will be one of children's drawings, drawings by children between 10 and 12 from a BLO school [school for children with learning or personality problems]. Why that? They are phenomenal, says van Heirseele. I said to the teacher: these drawing deserve an exhibition. He didn't believe me at first. But there will be one. (DP)