ABOUT
Bio
Arjan Vanmeenen (1986°) is a multimedia artist working primarily with video, sound, text, lasercutting and drawings, which are often combined in installations.
The common denominator in his work is the dissonance between fiction and reality.
His poetic use of technology allows the hyper-personal to flirt with anonymity, confronting the etherical with the mechanical.
By giving the upper hand to dream logic, he underlines the malleability of one’s sense of reality.
Utilizing a myriad of fragmented structures and living archives, he enables different trajectories of exploration and interpretation.
Regardless of medium, his works are all interlinked under the guise of ‘DreamCamEra’.
His work has been featured in various Belgian museums and has been selected for several international festivals including: European Media Arts Festival (Osnabrueck), BOZAR (Brussels), Museum Of Fine Arts (Ghent), Happy New Ears festival (Courtrai), Sameheads Gallery (Berlin), S.M.A.K. (Ghent), Guido Gezelle Museum (Bruges), Opera Studio (Ghent), Salon Voor Schone Kunsten (Sint-Niklaas), Kikker Theater (Utrecht), OFFoff artcinema (Ghent), Recyclart (Brussels), Broelmuseum (Courtrai), Red Fish Factory (Antwerp), Actuele Kunst Labo (Ronse), Muziekcentrum De Bijloke (Ghent), Fort Monostor (Komarom), Netwerk (Aalst), Fashion Week (Paris) and Pixxelpoint New Media Arts Festival (Nova Gorica).
EDUCATION
Master Media Arts – Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent (2010)
Bachelor Experimental Studio – LUCA School of Arts, Ghent (2008)
Free Art – Van Eyck Academy for Fine Arts, Bruges (2005)
HAS (Hesitant Ambient Shadows)
video installation 2020
Borders blur as background and foreground disolve
UP is DOWN is UP is
video installation 2017
Up Is Down Is Up, is an experiment with text and narrative projection. The voice-overs are performed by children that don’t speak the English language. Therefore not only the content mutates, but intonations and emphasis are skewed and displaced. Deliberately making the viewer question what exactly is being said, suggested or imagined.
The installation is embedded in its surrounding space, lodged in the earth in an awkward tilt. Causing the viewers to switch positions in an attempt to view the content. The volume is also quite low, drawing to viewer closer to the object in an attempt do decypher its content.
HIDE & SEEK
video installation 2014
Hide & Seek allows itself to be easily described in cinematographic terms:
where one focuses, the other will zoom out. The triptych installation mutates in correlation to how far or deep the spectator is willing to look.
To hide and to seek, to conceal and reveal are not merely the starting points of the artists , but it is also a mission for the spectator. The teeming and whirling of extreme close-ups only reveals itself when the visitor (re)positions one’s own body. If not, it will only be seen as an abstract spectre of color.
The second part of the installation can be found in a window construction. It gives viewers a choice to either identify anthropomorphic silhouettes in the tableau or regard them as a trick of shadows.
Ambiguity and changing perspectives also hold court when invited to watch or walk through the third arm of the work.
Cache Caché
aduio installation 2016
Cache Caché is a work that deals with paranoid schizophrenia.
It harbours the tales of two women. “E” a young Polish girl who believes she has already died and is now a ghost, and the story of ” G”, who is convinced a double of her is trying to take over her life.
When approached from a distance, the two stories overlap. The listener is forced to choose and kneel on one side of the box in order to isolate one story. However, because the opposing side is never fully muted, a more nuanced straining of the two stories points out often unforeseen similarities and dualities.