EVERYTHING TOUCHES EVERYTHING. Nico Dockx

venue:
Gallery On The Move

EVERYTHING TOUCHES EVERYTHING. Nico Dockx

From June 10 until August 10, 2020

Gallery On The Move present the fourth site-specific installation of the project "Here" by Nico Dockx. The sentence “Everything Touches Everything“ will be realise in graffiti context in various locations of the city.

Graffiti is a practice that has spread all over the world. It is an urban action that is often seen as a crime of vandalism, regardless of the originality of its maker. But if we must speak of vandalism, graffiti is perfectly comparable to the phenomenon of advertising posters. Both attempt to communicate through public spaces. Both are there for the sole aim of influencing a consumer (to paraphrase Pier Paolo Pasolini, our contemporary society does not set out to raise good kids, but good consumers). It is simultaneously interesting and grotesque to realize that in both cases we are looking at acts of vandalism. But in the case of graffiti those acts are punishable by law, while advertising posters are instead encouraged by various means and regulations. My proposed project “Here” is a ´marriage´ of these actions. In my view, the ideal space on which to put graffiti is an advertising poster. The clandestine graffiti artist becomes happy and legal thanks to this courteously supplied and available space.

Nico Dockx (born 1974) works as a visual artist, curator, publisher and researcher with a fundamental interest in archives. His interventions, publications, texts, soundscapes, images, installations, performances and conversations -- which are usually the result of collaboration with other artists -- embody the relationship between perception and memory, which he interprets differently each time. His work has won him a DAAD grant in Berlin (2005), and various prizes like Le Prix Jeune Peinture Belge - the Emile & Stephy Langui prize (2009, together with Helena Sidiropoulos). Since 1998 he has exhibited his work at home and abroad and has published more than forty artist's publications with his independent imprint Curious. He is co-founder of interdisciplinary projects such as Building Transmissions (2001-2013), Interfaculty (2007-…), Extra Academy (2010-…), A Dog Republic (2012-…), and la Galerie Imaginaire (2015-…). Together with Louwrien Wijers, Egon Hanfstingl and many other collaborations, he has been working on his PhD project The New Conversations at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerpen and which he obtained in 2014 at CAC Brétigny upon invitation of curator Pierre Bal Blanc. He also co-organized with Pascal Gielen the summer schools Mobile Autonomy (2015) and Making Public Domain (2017) with accompanied books with Valiz Publishers Amsterdam. He collaborates with la Galerie Imaginaire and LIGHTMACHINE agency.