SUPER DEMOCRACY - The Senate of Things

Three cultural institutions enter into a dialogue with the Belgian Senate during the exhibition SUPERDEMOCRACY, which is on display throughout October. BPS22 in Charleroi, BOZAR in Brussels and M HKA in Antwerp provide a cultural dimension to the Senate’s current issues.

1.10.2017 - 31.10.2017

Vaast Colson

(c)image: Creative Commons Licence
No more superheroes, 2001
Multiple
mixed media

In the piece No more superheroes from Vaast Colson, several of the artist's investigations and sources of inspiration come to coincide.  The tagline is a clear reference to the album No more heroes by the Stranglers from the notorious punk-year of 1977.  The skateboard cult of the 1980s also provides a source of inspiration for Vaast Colson.  The drawing of a bat is again applied with an alcohol ink marker, held clamped by the artist in an anatomical nether-region.

A favorite theme within Colson's oeuvre is related to the role of the artist.  He is constantly occupied with creating artistic roles, protagonists fashioned for himself.  With the piece No more superheroes, the artist seems to wish to distance the rolls he assigns himself from the heroic exploits of Modernism's glory days.  Colson's protagonists are indeed seldom tragic or dramatic.  His performances or interventions sometimes appear to lead nowhere; they even at times exude an air of boredom.  The portrait of the artist... as mythic anti-hero.