Anouk De Clercq: Motion for Newton

Video installation on LED screens

From April 25 to November 9, 2008

Movement is the focus of Anouk De Clercq’s new video installation Motion for Newton. Inspired by the famous physicist’s laws of motion, the Belgian artist allows lines and forms to affect each other in an interplay with their direct environment.

For her installation of the SEVEN SCREENS De Clercq developed a video loop, whose point of departure was an analysis of the OSRAM building’s architecture. The artist thus created a work that was specifically developed for its location and those passing by the site in their vehicles. The artist refers to her new work as Motion for Newton. This title stands for a “constructive mobile,” which is inspired by the vertical forms of the SEVEN SCREENS, as well as by the city’s architecture, high rises and sky scrapers. Forms encircle each other in continuous motion. The work’s main theme is the moving body in relation to its environment. The SEVEN SCREENS are transformed into "motion sculptures," which become a homage to Isaac Newton. The scientist and author of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, described the universal theory of gravitation and the laws of motion and thereby laid down the foundation for modern engineering.

The young artist, Anouk De Clercq, is one of the shooting stars of the Belgian art scene and has been nominated for this year’s Flemish Cultural Prize. Trained as a musician, she looks for the interplay of various art forms. She develops her projects in collaborative efforts with writers, musicians, choreographers, architects and programmers. Yet it is above all her video works, which have gained her international recognition. Her computer-generated videos usually focus on spatial contexts: In this way she isolates, for instance, landscapes and buildings from their geographical situations, transforming them into black-and-white abstractions. By means of the interplay between light and shadow, she creates new spaces in an atmospheric virtual reality.

De Clercq’s is already the fifth project to be created for the seven light stelae, referred to as the SEVEN SCREENS and located on the Mittlere Ring in Munich, which were presented for the first time in 2006, the year of OSRAM’s centennial anniversary. The program’s curator, Christian Schoen (Reykjavík/Munich), invited the Belgian artist to develop a site-specific work for this unique project in public space. Anouk De Clercq’s work follows installations of the SEVEN SCREENS by Trio Mader | Stublić | Wiermann, Haubitz+Zoche, Diana Thater and ART+COM.

Anouk De Clercq
Anouk De Clercq was born in Brussels in 1971 and studied piano and composition at the Academy of Music in Ghent and film at the Saint-Lukas Art Academy in Brussels. Her solo and group international exhibitions have been frequently honored. She has also received several awards, including an award from the Future Imprint International Animation Competition, Taipei (2003), first prize at the Courtisane Short Film, Video and Animation Festival, Ghent (2004), the International Backup Award New Media in Film, Weimar (2004), the Illy Prize for the best solo exhibition at Art Brussels (2005), as well as her nomination for the Flemish Cultural Prize (2008). Anouk De Clercq lives and works in Brussels.