Jan Fabre taxes his brain

(Achteruitkijkspiegel 2 / Laughter and bread mirror © Jan Fabre)

Although Jan Fabre has a permanent installation in the Museum of Fine Arts, strangely enough it has been a long time since he had a gallery exhibition in the capital. A situation now rectified by the exhibition currently devoted to his work by Daniel Templon. In it, the Antwerp artist and man of the theatre presents, among other works, a new video (Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart?) in which he interviews the eminent Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti, renowned as the discoverer of the mirror neurons that make empathy possible. The interview develops into a not uninteresting conversation about the human brain, empathy, imitative behaviour, and our reaction to works of art. During the discussion, the two wear little yellow caps with electrodes attached. Gradually, they begin to display more and more of the symptoms of lab monkeys – rapidly eating pieces of fruit, for example. The video is in a similar vein to previous dialogues performed by Fabre in absurd settings. On one occasion, for example, he, Peter Sloterdijk, and the anthropologist Dietmar Kamper together pushed a gigantic dung ball along. Then there was the time that, dressed as a beetle, he carried on a conversation with the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov on the roof of a skyscraper in New York. The rest of the exhibition is made up of pieces of sculpture and drawings that are also about the brain, which Fabre describes as “the sexiest part of the body”. In eight sculptures in gleaming white Carrara marble, Fabre depicts brains. Some of these have a spider on top, or a banana, a flower, or nuts – items that Rizzolatti uses in his experiments. And also every possible kind of insect and fruit. How many variations on the same theme can you keep on coming up with? A question that Fabre and his assistants may also have asked themselves, given that they have also produced yet another brain with a pair of scissors and a corkscrew in it, in different materials (including silicone). That particular work is also repeated as a gigantic sculpture in marble. And as if that wasn’t enough, the artist has also put his preparatory sketches on display. Fabre’s way of “investigating” the brain’s mirror function is decidedly casual. It offers us, moreover, a gratuitous form of surrealism that very soon becomes predictable. In the video, Rizzolatti talks about how our brains react to good and bad art. It would be interesting to see what the results would be after a visit to this exhibition…

JAN FABRE: DO WE FEEL WITH OUR BRAIN AND THINK WITH OUR HEART? > 31/5, di/ma/Tu > za/sa/Sa 11 > 18.00, Galerie Daniel Templon, rue Veydtstraat 13A, Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, 02-537.13.17, www.danieltemplon.com