Artist initiative Dog Day Cabinet dives into the wild

We've said it before: Brussels is fertile ground for artistic initiatives which, on the fringes of official circuits and commercial enterprises, push the boundaries of the expected; a place for dialogue and cross-fertilisation. Dog Day Cabinet is one of these initiatives.

It was launched by two photographers, Patrice Deweer and Peter Waterschoot, and after a first edition in Antwerp last year, the exhibition at Le Clignoteur is the second part of what is intended to become a trilogy.

The premise and objectives are the same: to create an artistic interaction – in terms of content, form, and ideology – between photography and other disciplines. At Le Clignoteur, this is being expressed in the first instance in the space itself, which has been transformed into a kind of cabinet of curiosities, (literally) a darkroom where the images – sculptures, collages, videos, photographs, drawings, and paintings – gradually come into focus.

The web that "Dog Day Cabinet n°2" weaves between this diverse but excellent work by fourteen different artists, starts from the special relationship that people – as fragile embodiments of culture, creation, and imagination – have with overpowering and overwhelming nature. "An Elegant Pose Facing Nature" allies this with a broad variety of manifestations, ranging from the ferocious waters of painter Giovanni Winne to a poetically serene video by Tine Guns.

There is the overwhelming work of Fia Cielen, who charges her drawings with a monstrous primal power, and in which a tender nature sculpture – a branch that forms into a finely carved hand – summarises the entire thematic web. Just as intimate, sensual, and elusive are the exhilarating but ultimately unknowable bodies that Julie van der Vaart explores like rolling landscapes.

Peter Waterschoot distils a magical universe from the twilight, which excites your imagination somewhere between seeing and not-seeing. The magic located between seeing and not-seeing is in fact how you could describe all of this "elegant pose".

> Dog Day Cabinet n°2: an elegant pose facing nature. > 4/12, Le Clignoteur, Brussels