Art From The Dark Heart of Europe: Read Our Conversation With The Dangerous and Alluring Gallery Director Harlan Levey on the Eve of Art Rotterdam →

Marcin Dudek Performance at opening of new HLP space, 2015

Harlan Levey Projects is not only one of the most exciting galleries in new art hot spot Brussels, but the gallery may also have one of the greatest and most exciting rosters and platforms in the world. On the eve of Art Brussels 2016, we have a chat with Harlan about his stint as a professional soccer player, contemporary art and more. Read the full interview here. 

Radek Szlaga 'All the Brutes' @ Harlan Levey Projects

Who was it again that wrote every time he came to Brussels, he had to think of the plundered richness of the Congo on which this city was built? From Park Cinquentenaire, to the stately avenues Louise and Tervuren, King Leopold II’s Museum for Central Africa, there are countless buildings, sculptures and squares across town, which directly or indirectly remind us of the country’s colonial past. This makes the capital of Europe a perfect setting for Radek Szlaga’s exhibition "All the Brutes" on view now at Harlan Levey Projects. The show consists of a selection of works from his on-going series, which digs into Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness; a work that has become the textbook example in colonial studies of a caricatured depiction of Africa. Szlaga hasn’t followed Conrad to the Congo, but spent two months in Brussels on a residency this year exploring the links between the heart of Europe and the heart of darkness. In case any Belgian viewers might object to a body of work dealing with the Congo that’s painted by an artist who has never been to Africa, let’s remind ourselves that Leopold II never placed a foot on Congolese soil as he uprooted it. Besides, Szlaga’s aim is not to present some anthropological view on Congo, but to explore, in a pictorial way, how the novel is engrained in our collective imagination, whether that is through literature, cinema, painting or in daily life (like the all too often quoted: “The horror! The horror!”). Radek Szlaga 'All the Brutes' will be on view until July 11, 2015 at Harlan Levey Projects, 46 Rue Jean d’Ardenne Straat, Brussels. 

Crackle & Drag T.R. Ericsson's First Solo Museum Exhibition Opens This Weekend At The Cleveland Museum Of Art

T.R. Ericsson employs photo-based work, sculptural objects, and cinema to create installations that provide a ruthlessly honest, yet tender portrait of his mother, who committed suicide at age 57, and of the triangulated relationships between three generations within one Northeastern Ohio family. Ericsson is involved in an ongoing investigation and reinterpretation of a deteriorating archive of family artifacts, documents, writings, and photographs. Crackle & Drag makes a personal struggle public, coming to terms with the archive’s power to determine the past and the future, even as it vanishes in time. The exhibition’s title is taken from the final line of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge”: “Staring from her hood of bone./She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.” T.R. Ericsson's Crackle & Drag will be on view from May 23 to August 23, 2015 at the Cleveland Museum Of Art. After that, you can catch his show All My Love, Always, No Matter What, which will be on view from September 10 to October 8, 2015 at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels. 

Dallas Art Fair 2015 Highlight: Harlan Levey Projects

Brussels, Belgium based gallery Harlan Levey Projects shined at the 2015 Dallas Art Fair with a booth that explored American nostalgia and the dark under pinnings of memory and the soul. For instance, T.R. Ericsson's haunting silkscreen images of his mother and his childhood are silkscreened on canvas with ink, cigarette nicotine, and ash to represent the gritty minutiae and detritus that add up to the sum of our earthly existence. Other artists included Radek Szlaga, Willehad Eilers and Abner Preis. photographs by Whitney Loren