Appeared in the corner of your eye  2022 - M Leuven

​

Ralph Collier's artistic practice explores the nature of image, exhibition and reality by disrupting the components that make them up. He carefully manipulates their fundamental or formal characteristics, plays with their parameters, and seeks the boundary between truth and fiction. Do we write fiction on the basis of reality - or is it just the opposite?

 

With the performance Appeared in the Corner of Your Eye at M Leuven, Collier wants to break through the streamlined program of the exhibition's vernissage. According to the meticulous but enigmatic planning of the diagram the visitor gets when entering the exhibition, a few well-known people will appear and disappear again in the museum during the vernissage. The only trace of their temporary presence is their signature on the wall of the exhibition hall. How do you experience time when you know that something is about to happen? Can people still distinguish between fact and fiction when they are face to face with actors or well-known people from their favorite series or program? Who is in fact the actor here, and who is the spectator? And what remains of the tension of the performance after it is over? Collier's performance shakes up the stability of our conceptions of exhibitions, turning a seemingly static fact - artworks in a white space - into a dramaturgical performance that can only be experienced over time.