LOUIS DE BELLE

Failed Dioramas unveils the idle interiors of a Milanese apartment, where a bizarre array of hunting trophies and collectors' items are haphazardly combined in all possible manners. The photographs were shot without rearranging the animals in order to interpret them as "impromptu" dioramas, given the strange or even grotesque relationships with the furnishings of the apartment. This unusual insight into a private collection documents the failure of the collector to stage the trophies by the known rules of the art but it can also be interpreted as a genre of still life.

Failed Dioramas was presented at the Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, in a solo show curated by Felix Sattler. On the occasion of the opening, a catalogue printed on kraft paper was published by LUCIA Verlag.

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Failed Dioramas

Photographs by Louis De Belle
Introduction by Felix Sattler
Published by LUCIA Verlag

24 x 18 cm, 66 pages
Printed on Kraft paper
Numbered and Signed
ISBN 978-3-945301-23-4

SOLD OUT

Whenever we encounter collections, we are almost certainly put under a spell. Different qualities determine the appraisal for a collection. There are those that impress us by the value and history of very old and rare objects. Others fascinate by the mere amount of things collected, no matter how essentially unimposing the single object might be. Yet there has to be more. As Louis De Belle strikingly witnesses in his work »Failed Dioramas«, a collection can still go awry regardless of its rare and exotic objects. […]

From the preface by Felix Sattler, Curator, Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt Univeristät zu Berlin

Failed Dioramas at Tieranatomisches Theater, Berlin

Failed Dioramas at Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

Failed Dioramas at Bauhaus Universität Weimar

Failed Dioramas at Kunsthaus Erfurt

Exhibitions:

2018 Natural Artifice, The Glass Tank Gallery, Oxford
2017 So Weit So Gut, 5 Jahre HANT Magazin, Kunsthalle Erfurt
2016 Failures, ACCC, Raumplan, Milano
2015 Les Boutographies, La Panacée, Montpellier
2015 Failed Dioramas, Tieranatomisches Theater, Berlin

Reviews:
It's Nice That
Musée Magazine
Tieranatomisches Theater
Juxtapoz
Grilli Type
Paper Journal