For his first gallery exhibition in Brussels, artist Jan Fabre is presenting a previously unseen installation of sculptures made from white Carrara marble. The preview showing of the video Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart? is at the heart of an installation that explores the mysteries of the human brain.

As an ardent advocate of dialogue between different fields of knowledge, Jan Fabre has studied neurology for over ten years, working with a number of scientists. Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart? focuses on the artist’s dialogue with Italian neurobiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti, the man behind a major discovery, the mirror neurons that are the basis of the capacity for empathy.

As a romantic humanist, Fabre has turned to marble in his quest to investigate the brain, the physical counterpart of the intellect and seat of creativity. Imitation and empathy, the features that distinguish humans from animals, and human emotional and cognitive states are all themes he explores. Lobes, veins and arteries are laid bare by Fabre, who creates startling associations with objects, fruit and food used in Rizzolatti’s experiments. The drawings specially created for the installation examine other poetic possibilities for the brain, drawn from references to art history.  “The brains Jan Fabre present are the synecdoche of all imaginable human beings. The representation of the brain is extremely receptive: we can project all individuals onto it, starting with ourselves,” points out Jo Coucke.

Born in 1958 in Antwerp, Jan Fabre achieved recognition in the late 1990s for his work in the theatre and as a visual artist and author. He began to take an interest in performance art in 1976 and moved into production and choreography in 1980.  He has since created around thirty productions, a combination of dance and theatre, whose radical nature is a regular source of controversy. They include Je suis sang (2000) and L’Orgie de la Tolérance (2009).

Jan Fabre is an inveterate draughtsman, creating sculptures, models and installations that bring to life his favourite topics, such as metamorphosis and the artist as a warrior of beauty. Outstanding solo exhibitions include shows at Antwerp’s Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst in 2006 and the Louvre in 2008. A number of recent exhibitions have focused on the artist, at the Otterlo Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands (Hortus/Corpus, 2011), Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Musée d’art moderne in St Etienne (Jan Fabre. Les années de l’heure bleue, 1986 – 1991, 2011), Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille (Hommage à Jérôme Bosch au Congo, 2014) and Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev, Ukraine, since February 2014.

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Galerie Daniel Templon