Eric Van Hove

Eric van Hove during the circumambulating of Mount Kailash in western Tibet, in 2005

Éric Philippe Bernard Van Hove Marsan de Mondragon (born 1975 in Guelma, Algeria) is a Cameroon-raised Belgian conceptual artist, poet and traveler. He lives and works between Brussels and Tokyo.[1]

Work

Eric Van Hove studied at the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels and received a Master's degree in Traditional Japanese Calligraphy at the Tokyo Gakugei University in Tokyo.[2] He obtained a PhD degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2008.[2]

Bordering on activism with an existentialist tone, Van Hove's work is based on the artist's nomadic willing to simultaneously address local and global issues.[3] It encompasses many media ranging from installation to performance, video, photography and writing.[4] At times insubstantial and subversive, Van Hove's conceptually poetic interventions[5] often ponder and cross-refer to sociological, political and ecological issues as shown with Japanese Constitution Worm Autodafé,[6] Free Trade Concrete Mixer Kaleidoscope,[7] or Shark Fin Piñata, which relates to the illegal Taiwanese shark finning in Costa Rica (1998–2006), portrayed in Rob Stewart's documentary Sharkwater. Made at the end of 2007, Dan Liever the Lucht In is a body of works[8] responding to the 2007–2011 Belgian political crisis which was first shown in situ at the Belgian embassy in Tokyo before the building was destroyed for reconstruction.[9]

Van Hove's work includes wanderlust, defamiliarization, psychogeography and dérive,[3] and he early on acknowledged transcendentalist influences[10] in trying to oppose a more spiritual and decentralized approach to the Eurocentric intellectualism of the contemporary art world.[11]

Interested in bringing contemporary art not only to the public space outside galleries and museums but outside of the Western context itself,[11] Van Hove has been prolific in such diverse places as the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, Mount Kailash in Tibet, the Laguna de Perlas in Nicaragua, the Issyk Kul lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan, the Fianarantsoa province in Madagascar or more recently the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, China.[12] He also conducted artist talks (which calls “story-telling objects” or “oral exhibits”) in venues as different as Ramallah, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Darat al Funun in Amman, and the University of Sarajevo.[13]

The "Metragram Series", a photographic series Van Hove started in 2005[14] crossing the artistic genre of self-portrait, vanitas, iconography and Memento mori[3][14] in which he is seen inking the womb of women categorized as belonging to different types of groups, gathers images he produced in over 29 countries in 3 years. A digital slide show display of the Series was first presented as part of the Mediation Biennial in Poznań in 2008 (other Belgian artists were Jan Fabre and Koen Vanmechelen).[15]

References

  1. ↑ Les Métragrammes d'Éric Van Hove "Éric Van Hove inscrit l'itinérance au cœur de sa pratique artistique. Aux quatre coins de la planète, ses ..."
  2. 1 2 Here at Van Hove's website.
  3. 1 2 3 Laurent Courtens, "On the Road Again" L'Art Même N° 41, 2008, Brussels, pp 22-23.
  4. ↑ Marleen Wynants, Interview for Janus Art Magazine, 2008, Brussels.
  5. ↑ Here at Van Hove's own profile at creativeafricanetwork.com.
  6. ↑ Van Hove interviewed, shift.jp.org.
  7. ↑ Here at Van Hove's website.
  8. ↑ "Dan Liever the Lucht In #1", Van Hove's site.
  9. ↑ "Belgian Embassy Sale in Tokyo", Deloitte, November 2006, Belgium.
  10. ↑ "installations in Finnish Lapland", Van Hove's website.
  11. 1 2 Jan Van Woensel, Interview for Lokaal01/Breda, 2007, New York. Van Hove's website.
  12. ↑ Here at Van Hove's website.
  13. ↑ Here at Van Hove's website.
  14. 1 2 "Metragram Series", Van Hove's website.
  15. ↑ mediations.pl

External links

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