Geert Goiris - Flashbulb Memories, Ash Grey Prophecies
20 March - 24 May 2015

Foam is proud to present the Netherlands' first solo exhibition by Belgian artist Geert Goiris (born Bornem, 1971). Very few people in the Netherlands are familiar with his unconventional visual language and serious tone.

Goiris occupies a unique position in the field of contemporary photography. His layered photos of sublime landscapes, modernist architecture and reserved portraits possess a strange, unreal beauty with no perception of time and space, and are vaguely reminiscent of the visual language of post-apocalyptic feature films. And yet everything that Goiris photographs is real. Nothing is photoshopped. Many of his photos feature reminders of man's attempts to domesticate nature.

Goiris creates powerful images, in which he combines an almost universal perception of beauty with a subtle frisson of danger. As well as being mental images, his photos are records of reality that generate room for stories, associations and suspense in the area of tension between fact and fiction. The exhibition is entirely without daylight, and the oppressive atmosphere is intensified by spatial interventions and interaction between slide shows, framed photos of varying dimensions and enormous prints.

Since Reconstruction (Geert Goiris' first exhibition in the FoMu in Antwerp in 2000), solo exhibitions of Goiris' work have been held in Museum M in Leuven (2013), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2010) and during Art Basel (2009/2014). His work has also been included in various group exhibitions, such as in MUHKA, Antwerp, the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, BOZAR in Brussels, Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian. In addition, his photos feature in several international collections. Geert Goiris is represented by Galerie Art: Concept in Paris and Galerie Catherine Bastide in Brussels.

As part of Flashbulb Memories, Ash Grey Prophecies, Foam, in association with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp and EYE Film Institute, has organised an evening of lectures in Foam on 16 April, and film screenings in EYE of The Thing on 30 April, Mad Max II on 7 May, The Last Wave on 14 May, and The World, The Flesh and the Devil on 29 May.

This exhibition is organised in co-production with the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren - www.deburen.eu

www.foam.org/press/2015/geert-goiris