De Vereniging show: Evelin Brosi & Elvis Bonier | GET LOST

GET LOST

During Soleil Politique, Marcel Broodthaers’ retrospective, in M HKA – on Monday from 11am to 6pm – Get Lost is open. That is the basic principle of Evelin Brosi & Elvis Bonier’s new “show” that in fact, lacks any show content. Since – or rather although – at the indicated place, the gates of the museum, nothing at all occurs, the question raises itself: isn’t nothing always already something? That nothing happens does not necessarily mean that nothing takes place. In this sense Get Lost simply exists.

The title is both a call and a command. A hard yet diffuse appeal, addressed to many receivers. Surely, it besets the visitor who is ordered to up and leave: they must seek out beauty or sense for themselves. It’s a request to search within error and loss, without guidance, without instruction. Further, Get Lost also implies a “ fuck off ” in the direction of the museum. It is a sharp criticism of the museum as an authoritarian institution that determines what is worthy of being seen and experienced. Perhaps the place for art lies elsewhere, outside the walls of the stronghold? Finally, Get Lost is certainly an auto-command, a warning to the artist himself, to not be caught in the framework of the contemporary museum circuit and its commercial and tourist mechanisms, although he’s at the same time clever enough to exploit those strategies himself and use – or perhaps even abuse – the name of the museum.

Get Lost is clearly situated in the tradition of non-exhibitions, in which the exhibit itself is being exposed – and therefore also questioned (think of Daniel Buren, Maurizio Cattelan and Robert Filliou). Such situationist interventions (that Brosi & Bonier is no stranger to) are always radical gestures, which problematise the arts field and its rites and customs – not least to ask the question: what is it really, (an) artistic work?

Bart De Baere, October 2019
General & artistic director M HK