Upstream Gallery proudly presents video artwork "Batterie 2 (collapsed tobruk @ Zuydcoote)" (2022) from Jeroen Jongeleen at artfair LOOP Barcelona 2023.

Since 2003, LOOP Barcelona has been the first in its field exclusively dedicated to the discovery, promotion and acquisition of contemporary video art works.

LOOP Barcelona strives to re-examine traditional art fair models and methods of presentation by taking into account both the changing attitudes of viewing and interacting with art, and the particularities of moving image practices. LOOP offers a unique viewing experience by presenting each film project in a room of a hotel, thus creating a setting that both focuses on the artists’ work and facilitates the particular attention required by this medium. The art fair creates a community among those in the concomitant fields of contemporary art and cinema, and establishes an occasion to promote and discuss artists’ video and film with a specialized audience.

about the artwork and the artist 

Jongeleen’s (NL, 1967) work generally evolves in public spaces. He leaves traces in the (urban) landscape which he subsequently documents with photographs and films. With his interventions he promotes the free use of the public space and questions the way corporate influence, media and advertising, architecture and regulations limit and direct a citizens’ behavior. Jongeleen describes that his motivation to create art is not about ‘decoration or making people happy’ but about ‘free speech and movement, about opposition as the essence of a truly vibrant democratic society.’ As such, his politically motivated work sets out to illustrate the power and the dynamics of the street, while offering a utopian vision for the raw future.

"Batterie 2 (collapsed tobruk @ Zuydcoote)" (2022) is part of Jongeleen's series Running in Disputed Territories - No Man’s Land, which is rooted in the artist's Running in Circles series.

Jongeleen’s Running in Circles series originated in the pandemic but has since evolved into a long- term study of the power dynamics of public space, the powerlessness of the individual and, in his most recent No Man’s Land series, of significant historical battle grounds.

The works from the No Man’s Land series capture Jongeleen running in endless circles through the landscapes of Northern Europe. Elevating and descending with the landscape’s engraved craters left behind by shells, dodging remnants of explosives, running above old fortifications and alongside WWI memorials - Jongeleen’s performance is engulfed by the history of the land, the same land that was host to events like the Battle of the Somme, one of the deadliest battles recorded in human history.

Jongeleen’s hours and hours of running in circles are documented by a drone. This results in silent recordings of the solitary, intimate action. A performance by the artist who is trapped, stuck in a hamster- wheel of his own making - thereby posing the question: are wars of attrition also hamster-wheels of our own making? We are fighting for our utopian ideals, yet seemingly stuck in the dystopian consequences of our own actions.

 

 

LOOP Barcelona | 21 - 23 November 2023
More information here