Mind the gap 2009

With Mind the Gap, we want to make a no-man’s land tangible, specifically the border area where one extreme touches another. We are fascinated by transitional moments, transformations: the overturning, falling or folding from one state to another. We search for the places where these moments occur, also within ourselves: there is often a very special beauty to be found ... (Griet Dobbels and Dolores Bouckaert, October 2009) 

Dolores Bouckaert, primarily active as an actress, and Griet Dobbels, known for her visual work, worked together for the first time in the spring of 2007, when Griet Dobbels created The Eatable Book. This book was presented in the form of a detailed set of graphical texts set upon a one-metre long role of edible paper. Dolores Bouckaert contributed as author to one of the chapters, along with a philosopher, a theologian, a writer, an art historian, an artist, a psychiatrist, a cook and an art collector. (MDD, Picture This, in February-March 2007) 

This process of exchange was the basis for Mind the Gap, a recent project where both artists serve as a duo, approaching the work from opposite angles in order to form a new common language. In this way confrontation is sought out rather than avoided. Borders are selected and crossed, starting from the one question: "What enables the transformation of one extreme into another – or to stay the same?" The project is about daring (or not) and try (or not): there is always the fear of audit to hand, or to the crossing point where meanings are lost. 

With a certain obviousness Mind the Gap encompasses different disciplines and territories. In Netwerk a two-fold exhibition will be shown, that will activate different media and techniques. The presentation ends with a video performance, in which the artists question the manipulative and performative aspects of language and rhetoric, in order to continue to zoom in upon subcutaneous meanings. What does the performer keep hidden amid his convincing arguments? 

www.netwerk-art.be/en/galleries/149/dolores-bouckaert-griet-dobbels