“A paper-thin layer” around a sphere of nitrogen, hydrogen and oceans; just a membrane surrounding a sphere in the middle of nothingness – it is with this image that the astronaut Ron Garan describes the atmosphere of the Earth, observed from space. Created upon returning from an expedition carried out in 2008, his blog Fragile Oasis testifies to what has been called “the overview effect”: an emotional and cognitive disorder that affects astronauts at the sight of their planet, an interstellar Stendhal syndrome in which the immensity of the void makes them realize the smallness of everything else.

There is something of this clash in scale, of a visual and affective disruption, in the work of Hamish Pearch. His “overview affect” is not that of an orbital capture at 360°, but of a relativization in which the infinitesimal is felt as much as the cosmos. In playing with size, his works attempt to capture portions of infinity. In bins, in bags, in Siamese cups with centripetal forces – so many containers where scientific schemas meet the grammar of dreams. Pearch disrupts logical discourse with a lexicography of images made up of unexpected twinning and fortuitous equations. He measures the gaps and equivalences between a thing, its double, and its quadruple miniature, as in his image of a brain held in place by bits of chewing gum that offer a disturbing resemblance. “Mapping out the world with diagram and objects,” reads the subtitle of one of Pearch’s pamphlets. It is from this logic that his assemblages arise. They aim to trace the world in terms of its materials, to organize it in terms of what we chew and what we pick up, to scratch the bottom of bags to see what we find there.

There is a reconstruction of the universe via bricolage, wherein the azure of an oxidized mushroom imitates a planet and integrates into a system at once solar, cellular, and economic. Pearch piles up all three systems, tearing out the pages of astronomy textbooks and covering them with medical imaging or invoices, or with opaque molecules in the form of paperweights. Elements resist gravity here; they affect each other and press against each other, like a leaf plucked from in front of the atelier, fossilized in bronze, and held further in place by another of these paperweight marbles. It’s because everything still risks levitating, being rendered weightless, like in a space shuttle.

The exhibition itself mimics takeoff: the gallery entrance reenacts the ritual of the airport security check, with a large counter for unzipping suitcases. Do not throw trash into the pond takes up the tone of signage. The title rings out in warning: do not throw anything into the pond, keep everything in your pockets; empty them into bins transformed into display cases, sealed with a pane, with wire, cut with the precision of a jigsaw. Pearch literally empties his bag, like a confession, a portrait en creux composed of what he has kept. Tell me what you’re carrying, I’ll tell you who you are – or “What’s in your handbag?” to cite Vogue’s celebrity questionnaire. A Chanel backpack? You are pragmatic; unstoppable, you can’t stay still! (Margot Robbie). An Isabelle Marant clutch, inside a Prada bag? You are foresighted, ready to brave the unexpected (Gigi Hadid).

Pearch revisits the intrecciato typical of Italian leather goods to his own ends. Made in a Milanese artisanal foundry, a bag’s basket intertwined with flowers camouflages only a toad, for which it serves as a nest. Neither makeup, nor passport, none of the accoutrements of travel that ratify or reshape identity – just this amphibian. It underlines Pearch’s attraction to mutation, of which the toad who dreams of being a prince is a time-honored symbol. Of this transformation for which a kiss would suffice, Pearch has kept only the tongue: during one of our conversations, he mentions the toad-licking practiced by certain visitors to the Sonoran desert, who are eager to lick the incilius alvarius, a frog whose skin is said to contain psychotropic secretions. What if metamorphosis has only ever been the effect of tripping?

Pearch plays on the polysemy of 'tripping'. Here the journey is one in which perception changes with altitude – to the point of seeing in a peanut the possibility of a precious stone; of contemplating the Milky Way in a tartan fabric studded with chewing gum; of transforming an envelope of pustules into a translucent surface. From a ship to a taxi of which only the receipt remains, Do not throw trash into the pond is a matter of transport, baggage, and moltings. Pearch turns over clothing fabrics, looks under the epidermis, enlarges cells to see maps. The exposure goes to the edges of the eye to stretch the mucous membrane. It’s about letting deformations happen, being moved by our memories, by this trash lost at the bottom of pockets and among the cliffs. Then the smallest thing can shine like a star. It is an intoxication and an inversion comparable, the author Daphné B. tells us, to that provoked by the overview effect: “[…] From space, we can even see the scars that run across the surface of the Earth […], the erosion of its lands, the borders traced on its gridded flesh. Plunged into a euphoric state, the overwhelmed astronauts are filled with love, empathy and care for [the Earth]. The spectacle of fragility is hypnotizing. It is also said that it is the favorite activity of astronauts on missions, staring down at the Earth and getting drunk on its flaws.”(1)

Text by Salomé Burstein

In Jim Carroll’s The Petting Zoo, the distraught protagonist Billy Wolfram succumbs to a neurotic crisis after attending an opening at the Met. He eventually recalibrates, discovering new frameworks through which to understand his position in the world. While flipping through an Eastern art tome, the prodigious Wolfram perceives a connection with his recently purchased billiards table, and the triad these two form with his own artistic struggles. The congruence between a mandala and the constellation of billiard balls, suddenly provide a moment of clarity and perspective.

Possibilities to assume new frames of thought through material orchestration and subversions is what drives Hamish Pearch’s expansive practice. Smoky, Moth and Mike becomes an evaluation of systems, miming nerve patterns, molecular dynamics, and the cosmos. Micro to macro concerns are negotiated by Pearch, as he produces three dimensional events borne from diagrams, material transformations, and radical play.

The exhibition and work titles in this show refer to names given to unfurling, explosive occurrences: tropical storms, nuclear bombs, suns, galaxies. The blanket anthropomorphisation of natural phenomena and man-made eruptions. René Magritte’s 1927 essay Les mots et les images is an effort to understand the complications in relationship between objects, images and words. Although, “the object (a wall) hints at other objects behind it”, the totality of the scenario eludes comprehension. The objects in this show parallel this with their own disruptive, playful logic. In an attempt to contain form and define an explosive world, slippages and failures occur.

Pearch creates the space for things to perform roles other than those prescribed to them. Everyday objects, in combination, present new rationales. It is through constant consideration of possibilities that Pearch creates situations in which they can exist as open-ended questions, ripe for attachment to new ideas. This is a contortion of nature, turning static thing-ness on its head and entering it into the vortex of rediscovery.

Text by Reilly Davidson

‘Day by Day, Good Day’ draws its title from a series of paintings made by German artist Peter Dreher from 1974 until his death in 2020. Over the course of those 45 years, Dreher painted 5,000 versions of the same glass of water, recording the subtle shifts of light across each passing day. His presence here is more than just a borrowed name: Dreher’s steady focus and protracted lens lives on in the ten artists whose works line the floors and walls.

Each artwork is the result of intrigue with a specific subject. The featured artists make repetitions, with subtle revisions of context, material or method of presentation. They do so to underpin the origin of their fixation, only occasionally diverting elsewhere before returning to their sustaining fascination. Through this longing to understand their preoccupations, the constant retellings reveal new meanings, unearthing revelations that, day by day, will doubtlessly appear again.

With Oscar Enberg, Sara Knowland, Soshiro Matsubara, Oliver Osborne, Hamish Pearch, Garrett Pruter, Laurie Smith, Elinor Stanley, Rosemarie Trockel, Lingrui Zhang. Curated by Ted Targett.

The exhibition Je suis la chaise—borrowing the title of Michael Krebber's eponymous exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel in 2007—explores the different symbols and interpretations given to this generic and daily used object. The chair is seen here by various artists as a shape to be deconstructed or reconstructed, as an extension of the human body or even as a social allegory.

The chair has since its origin in ancient Egypt for main function to symbolize the rank and power of its occupant and owner. This symbolic origin is contained in the very etymology of the French word dating from the 13th century—chaiere—which means chair, seat, throne. A chair is an incarnate object: empty it marks absence, but when used it becomes one with the body it supports. It is also an invitation to stillness, to individual or collective reflection, like a pause in time. This exhibition aims to question the form, the function, as well as the symbolism of the chair, inviting us to reconsider it thanks to the often irreverent or highly symbolic take on of the artists.

With Allora & Calzadilla, Abraham Cruzvillegas, BLESS, David Douard, Francisco de Goya, Wade Guyton, Mona Hatoum, Thomas Hirschhorn, Klara Lidén, René Magritte, Jean-Luc Moulène, Ken Okiishi, Rick Owens & Michèle Lamy, Hamish Pearch, Anri Sala, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Oscar Tuazon and Heimo Zobernig.

Civil Twilight occurs just after sunset and the moment when the geometric centre of the sun is at 6 degrees below the horizon.

Caught before the beginning of day and beginning of night, twilight beckons the end. A bewitching intermission before the changing worlds. A palette cleanser for the next act. Twilight is the thin edge of the thaumatrope of time, flickering at speed as memory merges the transitions from day to night. In summer; morning light beckons a flight of song, and evening calls on those who invade, leech and crawl through the darkness. Winter dawn brings thaw, slowly tearing at the frost delivered by night, dusk brings time for cold to once again take hold. Twilight offers an
exchange of knowledge for secrets and secrets for knowledge, day exposes and night shrouds. Harmony is found as twilight balances the scales.

Civil Twilight is the stage curtains for day, still keeping the dreams of night alive. Night offers few answers, and it's mystery compels. Day offers opportunity, to those willing to engage with its tribulations. In the heavens above, Civil Twilight offers daylight a glimpse at theatrics. The fade in and eventual out signalling its presence. Daylight offers calm and new beginning. Night consumes the world stage, emotions are amplified. Night needs no introduction and dusk as it's opening
beckons it's intent.

From the corner of your eye Civil Twilight performs its ritual. The sky's leading star, washes with rich flourishes of reds, pinks, blues, and yellows, the announcement of change is rarely without spectacle.

With Guendalina Cerruti, Sam Cottington, Evangeline Ling, Gal Schindler, Mary Stephenson and Michelle Uckotter

13.17 Hey, can I ask you something? 13.17 … 13.19 How do you spell IF? 13.20 You start with I and work your way to F, slowly. 13.26 Ugh! I haven’t got the patience for that 13.26 pa·tient /ˈpāSHənt/ Learn to pronounce noun plural noun: patients 1. a person receiving or registered to receive medical treatment. 13.29 My legs are tired. I want to be a patient. I want to be carried. I want to be cared for. I’ve got too much baggage 13.31 Our baggage is our strength, don’t forget that 13.34 It’s hard work being so solid, being around for so long 13.36 Moving rocks witnessing seismic waves. Liquid molten metal becoming form. In time 13.57 Close inspection makes me dizzy. I’m already lowest of the low, at ground level. Are you really ready to risk the fate of the centipede, who, when asked exactly how he crawled, shot himself? 14.26 Chiiiiillll. There’s no rush 14.32 Ok ok, so we just keep on crawling slowly slowly. N o r u s h 14.36 Yes, no rush. We’ve been on this rock, floating on shifting tectonic plates, hurtling at 66,000 mph around the sun, for as many years as a generation of centipedes have legs 14.39 How long is that? 14.39 A long time 14.40 How long? 14.42 Remember your late father Eunotosaurus Africanus? 14.42 I try not to. 14.45 Well, Eunotosaurus wasn’t to know this of course, but he was to become the ancestor of all tortoises, sea turtles and terrapins. 55 million years ago. 14.46 So he’s to blame 14.50 … Easy. What’s that Larkin poem? 14.56 They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you. 14.58 Yeah but.. …they were fucked up in their turn. By fools in old-style hats and coats… Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. 15.00 So even rocks have it bad 15.02 That’s not my point. 15.04 What’s your point? 15.05 It wasn’t Eunotosaurus’s fault, he had a father too, and he had a father too, and he had a father too. The line runs so deep even the roots and rocks feel it. To untangle it all would all be require the creation of a new world 15.06 Right back to The Beginning. 15.08 Yeah. That time when there were snails shifting their way over the earth. On their shells were patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. They were carrying the light 15.12 The light that we carry now 15.13 Exactly 15.13 For the bang 15.14 The fireworks. The splitting of time and the production of sound 15.16 The counter spectacle of things not happening, and then the spectacle of things happening? 15.17 Yes. Right in front of us, out the window, on the ground. From nothing, to everything 15.28 My stomach’s in knots.

1. How far is a light year? What’s the best time to visit Margate? How fast is first class post? How do you keep flowers fresh? Why does London have clay and sand geology? How quick is London to Margate? How slow does the earth spin? What’s the moon tonight? How slow is too slow running? How far away is the moon? What really happened? How slowly to come off antidepressants? What’s the best time to post on instagram? How slowly should I release the breaks? Why is it called a light year? How far can a snail travel in a day? What’s the worst time of day? Why do I feel lightheaded? How do I want my eggs in the morning? What’s the worst that could happen? How do I want to be loved? How do I want to be seen by others? Do you want to play a game? Do you want to taste it? How do I want to be remembered? How dar can the human eye see? How do you get out of a depression? Do you want to know a secret? What makes me angry? How far is space from earth? Who is my hero? How long do snails sleep for? How quick is Usain Bolt? Do snails have feelings? How slow is too slow running? Can you see back in time through a telescope? What does Margate look like? Why is the sky blue? What is size? What is minimum wage? What is distance? Where is the horizon? How do I keep myself awake? What’s the median? Why do stars die? What’s the mode? How do I keep a conversation going? Why do we yawn? How do I stop feeling sick? Why does London water taste bad?

51. What does Margate smell like? What’s the time? What does Margate taste like? What time does Dreamland open? Do I want to dance? How well can a snail see? How do I keep fit? How do you keep myself motivated? What really matters? Can I drink on SSRIs? Why am I always tired? How long do snails live for? What’s the worst time to live in history? What’s your biggest fear? Why do we like music? What is sound? Why do we dance? When did we first?make music? Do snails like music? How can you tell someones age? What is love? When is the party over?

Before a place for worship, the disused protestant church of d’Ouwe Kerke gathers a group of artworks that dilates the meaning of transcendence by deconstructing conventional systems of representations, each one on their own terms. All season sanctuary presents a hybrid territory composed of sculptures, paintings, and mixed mediums stimulated by the encounter of different dichotomies, such as industrial and organic, order and disorder, real and imaginary, ephemeral and permanent, besides autobiogeographic practices facing racial and gender fights and the consumer and mediatic contemporary society.

With Alma Allen, Neil Beloufa, Paloma Bosque, Varda Caivano, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Paolo Nazereth, Hareil Revignet and Miranda Fengyuan Zhang

Tucked away, deep in the cerebrum and safely surrounded by walls and tunnels of brain tissue, two amygdalae brood in the dark. The name of these clustered packs of neurons is derived from the Greek amygdale, meaning almond, and thus reveals their shape. These two little almonds play a pivotal role in psychic life — they are generally associated with the darker side of emotional life and take on a significant part in the production of anxiety, sadness, and aggression. Yet, they tend to produce happiness and the feeling of reward as well. Whimsical in their function, they give a hand in the construction of desire and help make decisions. They assist in the production of memory and emotional learning and flare in cases of PTSD. Political orientation is said to be shaped by one’s almonds, too. But most of all, they allow one to remember oneself. They make sure that one remembers that yesterday’s thoughts were actually theirs — that the I is an I, which makes a self.

An ergonomic chair, a desk turned over, a stack of papers, and an archive box are some of the figures that constitute Pearch’s unruly landscape of petrified workers, of labor, storage, and grind. They are the ruins from which things grow — old modernist symbols that form the humus for non-human growth. Cacti and mushrooms grow stubbornly, while lemons repose. They form the place where almonds are lost and then found anew — where one falls in and out of the containment and control of psychic life, where the scenography of psychopolitics becomes an archeological scene of abandonment and decay that nourishes a renewed, yet still wonky life. Where the I becomes another, born of Thames mud. Where empty containers float against a monochrome ocean blue — the shell that constitutes seafare and trade, empty and lost at sea, the containment of life itself, gone. Where in the midst of this entropic soup a pigeon looks at itself in the mirror, and a mouse plays dead. Where from an almond the I sprouts.

– Tom Engels

For his first solo-presentation in Brussels, the British artist Hamish Pearch develops an in situ installation at front. Departing from the specifics of the space — being simultaneously a storefront, a diorama, and a container — Pearch amplifies and transforms these qualities into a sculptural proposition. Speculating on the hybrid co-existence of mankind, industry, and seafare, a poetic yet uncanny aggregation of containers and human faces covered in Thames mud “stares back” at passersby. Containers are recast as theatrical scaffolding, faces transfigure into commodity.

I'm good because I feel good. I feel good because I am good. My mother loves me because I am good. But if my mother doesn’t love me I feel bad. I feel bad because she does not love me. I am bad because I am bad. I am bad because she does not love me. She does not love me because I am bad.

They sit huddled by the water’s edge, a subdued gathering of orange, green, magenta, blue. As the rising light glances over their reinforced steel shells, stray shadows catch at the corrugated sides, fooled by the illusion of depth. Nothing penetrates. From the sky, they are military decorations stitched across a broad grey chest.

They are being held in a marginal place, awaiting allocation. This place has a different geometry to the rest of the coast. It is functional and deliberate, comprised of careful incisions cut into the land like the inner workings of a complex lock, and a thin jetty which runs alongside, rationalising the jagged coast into a single hinged line.

Marseille’s Fos Port is a circuit board, alive with discreet intention. By day, the arriving boats jostle like eager suitors as a line of sentinel cranes pivot and bow over the concrete, shuffling units like tarot cards. The air is filled with industrial noises and the smell of petrol and salt. Every movement is dictated from a distance.
By night, the mechanical dance continues. Sunshine is replaced by harsh fluorescence and torchlight. Security cameras twitch at fleeting movements as guards patrol the perimeter. Under the toxic buzz of tungsten lamps, goods are unloaded from lorries, held in stasis, then placed on a carousel and passed on to the waiting boats.

This place possesses a unique psychic energy. As a site of storage and transmission, every passing object, idea and face leaves an impression. They pool in the gutters and bloom out of the concrete, merging with the industrial landscape to form compound identities, so that the place itself, filled with so much fluctuating and fragmented matter, constitutes an altered state.

Despite the implied impregnability of steel and concrete, the site is revealed to be mostly water and therefore mutable. As a result, these impressions have a subjective quality to them. Vague images swim into focus: averted eyes, a cluster of cells, a forming wave. Ideas of what could be true, or might have been intended. Content, provenance and destination remain obscure.

Even the units themselves, each as defined and opaque as the back of a head, melt into a single, convergent mass as they are held together in this nowhere place. Their colourful stacks stretch into long, orgiastic ribbons of possible identity, pollinated by the atmosphere. Their resolute sides morph into fertile sites for projection and extrapolation as the irrepressible ocean swells beneath. - Claudia Paterson

This is a show about the edge of a night city. How things get built, how things get sold. All things have their time, peaks of activity and then the long wait for their own sad slump. The landscape turns to real estate, speculative development turns viral and things need to be put places. A mass of objects will come back to us. Stargazing is interrupted by a security torch, moonlight can’t compete. The guard dogs on the loose and it can smell your stinking fear.
In this room there is a family trip, someone dreaming of a petrol station, thinking architecture, blank newspapers, empty containers, obsolete carousels forever looping, exponential growth, dying daisies, security-guard torches, pyrotechnics on the edge of an island, moonlight blue, everywhere and everything, nowhere and nothing.
The container is an architectural site of things and thoughts, real and imagined objects. Most of these things are asleep; stuck in a still-life. Stuck on an island. Aside from the river of concrete that’s rolled over by people on their way to different places, this place is surrounded by an ocean of mud. From whichever direction look, it's all you can see.

North – ocean of mud
North by east – ocean of mud
North east by north – ocean of mud
North east by east – ocean of mud
East by north – ocean of mud
East – ocean of mud
East by south – ocean of mud
South east by east – ocean of mud
South east by south – ocean of mud
South by east – ocean of mud
South – ocean of mud
South by west – ocean of mud
South west by south – ocean of mud
South west by west – ocean of mud
West by south – ocean of mud
West – ocean of mud
West by north – ocean of mud
North west by west – ocean of mud
Northwest by north – ocean of mud