BIO STEVE SCHEPENS
All works of Steve Schepens (°1979, Belgium, MA painting) are entitled HORROR with an additional number or a subtitle. These include videos, performances, installations, graphic works, paintings and sculptures.
In 2008 the artist was invited by curator Paco Barragan to do a solo-project in the curated section of the artfair ArteLisboa. The installation was a house of cards, consisting out of 20 paintings and a series of cut-outs from the left-wing Portuguese newspaper.
For many of his works, used cardboard boxes are basic construction material. Cardboard from the installation is used for the glow-in-the-dark screenprints of performance stills. The invisible is as important as the visible in his oeuvre. His recent
exhibition HORROR 14 in Bruges was closed to the public. Schepens called it a ghost-exhibition. Parts of the non-public installation and the video from the unseen performance were exhibited afterwards in BE-PART. Later everything was combined into HORROR 44, an artist book, published in cooperation with BE-PART, De Bond, the Flemish Community, the city of Bruges and the West-Flemish community.
The HORROR work initially started from the background of painting and the artists’ fascination with the development of perspective and its implications on how images generate meaning. In his installations Schepens acts on the limits of historical images, working with different media and building a new perspective. Large site-specific
installations are temporary and often form a set for Schepens’ live performances amplified by the Belgian metal-band Kru Agre. Others form a set for videos of the artist performing simple (slapstick) actions with a cardboard box over his head. In
October 2008 the artist made his first public performance with a cardboard box on his
head in Berlin in two exhibitions on the same night (footage of these performances has been destroyed).
In his recent works the artist uses classical plaster sculpture casting. Videos of performances are projected onto these sculptures, thus being incorporated into the work. For the production of the casts Schepens uses cardboard boxes as moulds.
“Apocalypse now in the form of a disposable box, a retrieved sign, a repetition, an item, a #.” (P. De Vylder, ’04-’09).
Previous exhibitions include: Scalamata Gallery (IT), Galerie Van De Weghe (BE) , BE-PART(BE), De Bond (BE), ArteLisboa (PT), SMAK Museum (BE), Netwerk
(BE); MARTa Museum (DE); Artnews (DE); Scope artfair - Basel and Miami; The Residence Gallery (UK); brot.und spiele gallery (DE)
Future exhibitions include: Queens Nails Annex (USA), Hamish Morrison Gallery (DE), Galerie Van De Weghe (BE), Baronian-Francey Galerie (BE), De Brakke Grond (NL), Artstrom, Thyssen-Bornemisza (DE)