Slobozia, Texas
12 March - 29 April 2023
Opening Sunday 12 March, 2 - 7 pm at the Frédérick Mouraux Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, in the presence of the artist.
Frédérick Mouraux is pleased to present the recent works of the Belgian artist Barbara Debeuckelaere in her solo exhibition “Slobozia, Texas”.
Barbara Debeuckelaere (BE) concentrates on systemic thinking, capitalism, normalization, power, money, climate and fascism. Her work is caught somewhere between labels as documentary and conceptual as she formally visualizes an abstract idea. Debeuckelaere has the ambition to visualize the invisible, silently critical of the creeping normalization in the neoliberal realm of all things. In her solo exhibition in Frédérick Mouraux Gallery she shows works from her recent project Slobozia, Texas (2021). Dramatic gazes, gestures, bodily fragments of her images and stills of Dallas (the oil tycoon series of the eighties) are blown up and presented in different ways. The cool and distant presentation in shiny big light boxes creates a rather dystopian coldness and refer to the advertisement industry and consumer lifestyle. Apart from the steel light boxes, Debeuckelaere shows montages (of fragments of her images, Dallas stills, pastel colors, oil related landscapes and dark mirrors (fashionable in the eighties and a reference to the mirror effect in psychology)). In one of the frames, we see the picture of the projection room of Nicolae Ceaușescu , who like all dictators loved movies and had his own private cinema in the basement of the Spring Palace in Bucharest. The montages are presented in rectangular wooden frames, slightly reminiscent of a filmstrip, with slats between each fragment and as such also referring to the opening credits of Dallas with the vertical strips. Other images are presented in singular oak frames with art glass. Slobozia, Texas has been awarded and nominated for several prizes and competitions. Debeuckelaere published a book on this project, that was nominated for the Kassel Dummy Award. The series has been published in several quality newspapers and in 2022, Slobozia, Texas was exhibited in Fotomuseum Antwerp and at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam.
THE PROJECT SLOBOZIA, TEXAXS
Slobozia means freedom in Romanian but is also the name of a sleepy town in the east of the country. The project Slobozia,Texas (2020-21) relives the strange confrontation in the 80ies of Romanians under communist rule with Dallas, the legendary American campy soap. It shows oil-related landscapes, palace interiors (of Ceaușescu) and kitschy portraits. Slobozia has a permanent Dallas-vibe since a Romanian millionaire built a replica there of the family mansion in the soap. Ceaușescu allowed the airing of Dallas, which was at the time the only western fiction on state television. Allegedly because he thought the soap would prove to be anti-capitalistic with all its corruption, sorrows and misery. It backfired and according to some, Dallas even played a part in the Romanian revolution. The aesthetics, the luxury, the way of life, the American dream – everything about the show exemplified the thing that Romanians did not have enough of under Ceaușescu’s regime: hope and dreams. Dallas was not innocent fictional entertainment, it carried cultural imperialist views on the world and how it should be run. In Slobozia, Texas, ordinary Romanians with a connection to the soap (people working in the replica which became a Dallas Hotel or people active on Dallas fansites f.i.) re-enact scenes of Dallas, being photographed in the unforgiving light of a soap opera set, dressed to kill, absorbed in their dreams of the past. They act and play themselves in the same image, they told me their stories, how it was then and how it is now. Blending fiction and reality, theatrical gestures, cinematic gazes, pastel colors, mirrors and eerie video stills, the images constitute a throwback to the hyper-capitalist 80-ies. Slobozia,Texas is visualizing a past moment of future hope while documenting the present.
In combining this reality and soap, stills and photographs, play and seriousness, the project presentation creates an eerie atmosphere that at first glance confuses the viewer. Looking closer though, it is clear that, while constructed and re-enacted, all these fragments, scenes, portraits constitute very much a testimony of our emotions regarding the state of the world today.
Biography
Barbara Debeuckelaere (BE) graduated with a MA in Visual Arts, Photography (KASK Gent, 2021), with a MA in International Politics and European Law (VUBrussel, 1992) and a MA in Economy (KULeuven, 1991). She started her career in Dutch Guyana (Suriname) as a lecturer at the University of Paramaribo. From 1997 on she worked as a journalist, for newspapers De Standaard and De Morgen, and from 2002 on for the VRT (radio and television), often reporting in Iran and the Middle East. In 2014 she turned away from the news industry, to study art and focus on a broader and more poetically driven perspective on the world, mainly through photography.
