The city of Antwerp celebrates the Baroque period and Rubens. Rubens as a source of inspiration.
Politically and geographically the armed conflict between catholic and protestant religion dominated this time frame. In Antwerp, specifically, the Spanish occupied the city, the port, the area.

In Antwerp dialect the word for “conflict / a fight” is AMBRAS, it is etymologically drawn from the Spanish word for Antwerp, i.e. Amberes. To commemorate this period, LLS Paleis exhibits three “Spanish” contemporary artists: Oier Etxeberria, Pep Vidal and Oriol Vilanova. Rubens and the historic background of his life, will be their starting point.

Oier Etxeberria (Azpeitia, 1974) is an artist and musician. His work is developed in an archeological sense – always in relation to a framework of political, theological and cultural meaning and their mode of ordering reality. Anachronism is thus a recurrent tool in works – sculpture, collage, photography, texts and sound pieces – that put into question a truth from the past that in its new placing destabilizes our present.

Pep Vidal (Rubí/Barcelona,1980), lives and works in Amsterdam. He works with infinitesimal changes – changes really small – that are constantly always everywhere. The chain of infinitesimal changes is infinite and chaotic.

Oriol Vilanova (Manresa, 1980) lives in Brussels. By rummaging through flea markets, his favourite places for research, he has built up a collection of postcards to create a “thinking machine” that provides the conceptual foundations for his plays, installations and performances.