“In our society, with the help of a series of technological developments, images have increasingly been reduced to consumer goods and disposables. Long ago, through the invention of the printing press, and more rapidly from the 19th century on, with photography, photocopies, computers and digital techniques, the integrity and authenticity of images came under pressure. The oeuvre of Willem Oorebeek, a Dutch artist residing in Brussels, can be read as research into the way images behave under these circumstances: their vulnerability, their staying power.”

In 2010, Willem Oorebeek made a series of nine tapestries for the Ellips building of the Flemish government.
“As a source for the tapestries, the artist mainly used found images from different origins: calendar pages, a page from a book, magazine covers, ... By means of specially adapted software the digital images were transposed into a weaving pattern, resulting in a brand new and unique ‘original’. It is, for that matter, interesting to think of the historical Gobelin tapestries as similar end products of a long process of image production and manipulation (sketches on different levels, then full-size painted ‘cardboard’ and so on).”

LLS 387 is now showing the cycle as a whole in public for the first time.
Geheugenspoor by Willem Oorebeek is the last exhibition at the space in Lange Leemstraat 387. LLS 387 will move to Paleisstraat 140 at the end of this year and become ‘LLS Paleis’. There – under the new direction of Stella Lohaus – the first exhibition will open in early March 2018.

Artists: Willem Oorebeek