Fast and Furious, Doel Festival’s second on site exhibition, imagined by returning curator: Zoé van den Boogaerde.

Fast and Furious, or time has reduced space to a state of remnants; we live in an era where everything moves fast, where acceleration is the norm. With the advent of rapid transportation, rampant consumption, and rapid technological advancements, our planet seems to contract, both spatially and materially. Highways take us from one point to another without truly traversing a country, reducing each nation to abstract and standardised symbols.

Meanwhile, Doel remains, decays, waits, and grows impatient. This Belgian village illustrates these contemporary dynamics, posing the question: what does the future hold? It stands as a silent witness of our time, where old structures crumble while new ones emerge.

Fast and Furious pushes traditional boundaries by encompassing the entire village and festival of Doel. Through the village's history, this exhibition examines the consequences of economic choices on society and the environment. It explores these questions by defying and playing with socially and politically determined rules, transporting us into a world that explores our relationship with space and questions human interference, blending nature, collective spirit, and technologies.

For Fast and Furious, Zoé has invited the following artists, with more to be announced soon, to interact with the village of Doel:

Willem De Haan

Willem De Haan (1996, NL) challenges and undermines the socially conditioned and politically determined rules of everyday locations. By adding artificial elements in a convincing yet uncanny manner his works exert direct influence on daily situations. These suggestive sculptural interventions reference the influence of props on fictional scenarios in film and theater.

Nicolas Momein

Nicolas Momein’s (1980, FR) main interventions consist of identifying industrial or handicraft processes and techniques, undoing and re-enacting them while disconnecting them from their initial purpose.

The results are work-objects deprived of their functionality that remain highly technical however, like obstacles on the production chain that would have retained their serial and repetitive dimension. But Momein’s works rarely stand on their own: they belong to series for which the same gestures have been patiently reiterated with palpable care and love. It also seems obvious that, although the works belong to the same series, they are all different from one another. They are part of an open web of similes, with no beginning or end, ruled by neither model nor hierarchy, propagating one slight change after another.

Walter Wathieu

Born in Liège in 1992, Walter Wathieu is a Belgian artist living and working in Brussels. After obtaining a master's degree in industrial design, he had the opportunity to collaborate with several Belgian artists, enriching his artistic approach.

His work is characterized by the exploration and hijacking of various techniques. In particular, he has created video works using surveillance systems, as well as algorithmic pointillist digital works. His current focus is on a series of ectoplasmic steel sculptures.

A constant in his work is the contrast between rigorous technical control and the acceptance of randomness and accident in the final rendering, bringing a certain spontaneity to his work. In 2020, Walter founded the artist-run space Panamax in Liège, a venue dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art and artistic experimentation.

Xavier Mary

Xavier Mary, born in the former steel city of Liège in 1982, is a contemporary artist currently based in Brussels, Belgium. He received his Master's degree from the ERG (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Bruxelles) in 2005. In 2006, Mary held his first solo exhibition Highway Raves, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Since then, he has participated in numerous individual and group exhibitions in prestigious venues such as WIELS in Brussels, Galerie Christian Nagel in Berlin, Galerie Albert Baronian in Brussels, La Maison Rouge in Paris, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in Aachen, FUTURA in Prague, Konschthal Esch in Esch-sur-Alzette, and Centre d'art contemporain la synagogue de Delme in Delme, Va Buuren Museum (Bruxelles).

In addition to his exhibitions, Mary co-founded the project space DIESEL with curator Noémie Merca in an abandoned petrol station in the Seraing (Belgium). In 2019, Mary presented his first museum exhibition MX Temple, at the BPS22. As part of this exhibition, he also created a film in the jungle of the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia. In 2023, he will be the first contemporary artist to be invited to a residency at a UNESCO World Heritage site in Khajurâho, India. Mary is represented by Galerie Baronian in Belgium.

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