Angel Vergara

Angel Vergara’s work tests the limits of art and reality by questioning the way the contemporary image shapes the intermingled public and private spheres—as well as our own experience   Angel Vergara’s (b. 1958; based in Brussels) work is a continued investigation into the power of the image. By means of performances, videos, installations, paintings and drawings, he tests the limits of art and reality. Each of his works is an attempt to break through the image and to make its impact on an aesthetic as well as a sociocultural and political level. Thus, Vergara creates a new, suspended reality, grown from the artist’s personal dialogue with reality and with the image by which it has already been transformed. Decontextualised images of reality are mediated by the artist and transformed into art, encouraging the viewer to question their way of perceiving the everyday as well as the way it is presented to them in images. Vergara’s art disorients and disconcerts the viewer. It questions what is known and opens paths to new modes of signification. Accompanying the 2023 retrospective exhibition “In the Instant” that the MACS is dedicating to Angel Vergara, this important book reviews the career of the Belgian artist and highlights the close relationship between his painting and the cinematic medium.   Distributed for Mercatorfonds   Exhibition Schedule:   02.11.2022–02.06.2023 Outside installation. Musée de la batellerie—Conflans Sainte Honorine, France.   24.11.2022–19.03.2023 Photo Brut - Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels   23.04.2023–08.10.2023 Angel Vergara. In a Moment. Monographic exhibition. MAC’s in Mons, Belgium.