Frederick Bell

The Conversation

2011-08-11T17:21:00.002+02:00

This is a work I made in 2007 and is named after the Francis Ford Coppola film from 1974. In the film a difficult sound recording is made and pieced together where the words are crystal-clear but their actual meaning remains ambiguous.
In June and July 2011 Karin Bourghouts included a reproduction print of this work in her exhibition Present-Absent in Antwerp. 'The Conversation' in fact documents a coversation which took place during an earlier exhibition of Karin's work. I made a sequence of 20 stills using drawing to replace the role usually given to photography or film. The drawings are on canvases prepared for paintings that will never be finished, because in the sense that they are intended they are complete.

photograph by Karin Bourghouts ©

l'Atelier du Peintre revisited

2011-05-13T19:37:00.011+02:00

These sheets show my working ideas for a group exhibition proposed in Brussels at the end of this year. Although the exhibition has been postponed now, thinking about it threw up new ideas about some older work from 1996 called "l'Atelier du Peintre" (after the painting by Courbet).

carte blanche

2010-12-22T17:48:00.001+01:00

I made this work, filming the process at the same time, on Sunday 12th December in the Chicago Building, 2050 Antwerpen. I was assisted by Phil Wauters who lives nearby and had collected the frames over the past six years.

the artefactum years

2010-11-29T13:33:00.009+01:00

this is part of a double page spread article "the deconstructed image" which I co-wrote with marc schepers in 1994 when it first appeared in artefactum magazine. part of it has just been published this september in the book "the artefactum years" by the museum of contemporary art, antwerp. more info.

4 canvases = 2 drawings = 1 image

2010-09-22T12:42:00.002+02:00

Work shown in the Chicago building, Ernest Claesstraat, 2050 Antwerpen as part of

Wandelen in wijken: Kunstenroute Europark from 18th September to 31st October 2010.

The Man Who Stole My Painting of a Man Walking Past a Painting

2010-06-07T14:05:00.010+02:00

This is a work in progress about an incident at the end of October 2009 where one of my paintings was stolen from the exhibition Looking at Looking (a retrospective). The top image is a still taken from cctv of the incident and the bottom image shows the stolen painting. The thief has not been traced nor the painting recovered.

Trajector Art Fair

2010-05-05T17:19:00.008+02:00

Work presented in the TRAJECTOR ART FAIR BRUSSELS
23rd 24th and 25th April 2010
by Ruimte Morguen Antwerp

Return Trip: Bologna Antwerp Oakland Brussels

2010-01-28T12:33:00.012+01:00

a solo exhibition at
SOME WALLS, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
23rd January to 14th March 2010

see the on line exhibition with an essay by Chris Ashley at Some Walls

photograph by Chris Ashley

Imagine the Sound

2009-12-11T11:59:00.069+01:00

This is my contribution to "B sides and Rarities" published by

LOKAAL 01, BREDA, THE NETHERLANDS

Imagine the Sound

Although there are some ideas that I can talk about in relation to your project, I would like to qualify them first and set them in the context of my working process.

I could not really say that there are unrealised or impossible projects as such within my work, largely because of my working methods. The whole of my work is interconnected, constantly fluid and flexible without any specifically defined or preconceived outcomes. Areas or groups of work which don't necessarily have a specific purpose will usually, at some point, have an interesting relationship to something else and so, ideas or bits of work that have (sometimes for years) appeared irrelevant, can become important and vice versa.

Having said this, and at the risk of contradicting myself a little, there is an idea that I have been working on recently which I think does fall into the area that you are interested in documenting. I have been making sound recordings in two types of place:

(1) places that are significant in the visual arts, where practically the only kind of recording that is not made is sound;

(2) galleries and museums, some of which fall into the above category, but others that don't allow photography (even making a sound recording in these places seems to disturb the gallery attendants and they don't know how to react).

These ideas don't have definite forms of presentation or resolution at the moment, and also fall into the area of being elusive (or even impossible) in terms of visual art. They refer to it but don't show it, yet when listening to the recordings, it is possible to understand, locate and imagine where they were made.

In fact, I am not even sure whether these ideas will ever resolve in a concrete sense, or if I even want them to, because sometimes the proposal of an idea can be more elegant and interesting as an end in itself.

Frederick Bell November 2009

other work was also shown in 2007 at Lokaal 01 in the exhibition "Variety - Ian Breakwell"

Looking at Looking (a retrospective)

2009-12-08T13:14:00.018+01:00

a solo exhibition at

CULTUURCENTRUM, HASSELT, BELGIUM

20th September to 8th November 2009

exhibition information and Poster/ folding catalogue

Looking at Looking

2009-11-30T17:26:00.020+01:00

a solo exhibition of new work at

RUIMTE MORGUEN, ANTWERP

10th September to 17th October 2009

A text by Chris Ashley about an earlier version of this work can be found at Look, See

Umfeld-Kunst - The Field of Art

2008-10-24T13:37:00.030+02:00

A curated exhibition at FOTOGALERIE WIEN AUSTRIA

7th October - 5th November 2008

Work was also shown in the curated exhibition "Stilleben II - Interior"

31st August - 29th September 2004

Variety - Ian Breakwell

2007-05-15T14:20:00.031+02:00

Lokaal O1

Kloosterlaan 138

4811 EE Breda

Netherlands