Jan Fabre “I spit on my grave”, 2007, installation size variable (approx: 1500x250x220cm), Silicones, steel, polyester, human hair, glass, granite, textile, pump, filmblood
The work of Jan Fabre is determined by the dual system his life and oeuvre are based on. Life and resurrection are the central topics in his life, this becomes manifest above all in the frequent use of insects and beetles, whose lives are affected by permanent metamorphosis. The obsessive use of bic-blue lines is characteristic for Jan Fabre, by that he creates a different scenery which totally abandons its original shape. Point of origin of his work is the artist himself, uniting his own narcist counterpart as well as the masochist counterpart. By that he succeeds to keep the difference between beauty and misery, joy and catastrophe, between life and death evanescently low. He even succeeds to eliminate this duality, creating a unity out of that.
After the successful summer in Salzburg on September 13 Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna opens a one-man show of the Belgian universal artist Jan Fabre. The spectacular installation „The man spitting on his grave“, presented in the Palazzo Benzon at this year’s Venice Biannual is going to be the central work of the show, it shows the computer-controlled reproduction of the artist spitting on a huge insect-graveyard. In the work „Carneval for the dead street dogs“ the title seems to be programmatic, the „Table for the knights of dispair (resistance)“ is covered entirely with a complex meshwork of bic-blue lines. The most recent work „Hommage to Charles Verlat“ honours the Belgian painter Charles Verlat. He was famous for the intense colours he used. Fabre covered the bust with glimmering ball-point ink. „Is the brain the most sexy part of the body?“ – this is the question Fabre and a scientist keep track of, and of his thinking models try to give us an insight into Fabre’s complex world of thoughts.
Jan Fabre was born in 1958 in Antwerp and studied at the City Institute for Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Quickly he became successful as choreograph, director, author as well as in fine arts. His successful show at the 41st Venice Biannual was followed by several solo show, among others at the Biannuals of São Paolo, Lyon and Valencia, the Documenta IX in Kassel and at the Kunsthalle Basel, the Centro de Arte moderno in Lisboa, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brusseles, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt/Main. In 2002 he was invited to decorate a hall in the Royal Palace in Brusseles, and in 2004 he shocked the theatre scene with his performances at the annual Theatre Festival in Avignon. His performance „Requiem für eine Metamorphose“ at this years International Salzburg Festival was a big success, and so were the three shows running in Salzburg dedicated to the work of Jan Fabre, In 2008 the Louvre Paris is going to show a big retrospective of his work, curated by Marie-Laure Bernac.
