MAQUETTTE 2011 – GHOSTS OF THE FLASH

Gallery KM (www.gallerykmLA.com) will present Maquette 2011 – Ghosts of the Flash, an exhibition of photographs and films created from 1989 through 1998 by British-born Los Angeles-based Matthew Anthony Stokes and Belgian Dirk Hendrikx as part of an art collective and experimental theatre company known as Maquette. 

The show opens at Gallery KM in Santa Monica on Saturday, September 10^th and runs through Saturday, October 15^th, with a reception for the artists on Saturday, September 10^th from 5-8pm.  The gallery previously exhibited Stokes paintings in a solo show in June of 2011, entitled “Sun Man Paint Folio ’10- ‘11”.

Maquette 2011 – Ghosts of the Flash features 50 photographic prints from 35mm film, ranging in size from one by three to 16 by 12 inches, as well as 19 films, originally recorded on super-8, 16mm and 35mm film, and edited digitally in 2010 and 2011.  Sixteen of the films will be presented on iPads mounted on the gallery walls, along with three larger format projections shown as a triptych on a screen created from an old fur rug, and a fourth projector displaying a series of 250 photographic images. 

The exhibition at Gallery KM represents the first time that the performing and visual arts Stokes and Hendrikx created, photographed and filmed over a nine-year period will be presented as a single body of work, fourteen years after Maquette disbanded. 

Stokes and Hendrikx met in Paris in 1989 where each studied corporeal dramaturgy (expressive theatre), Stokes with the master of the form, Étienne Decroux.  They left Paris and moved to Kent in the English countryside where they lived and worked in a large abandoned barn with lighting designers, actors and other artists.

As Maquette, they designed costumes, built theatrical sets and performed in front of audiences.  Other times they simply photographed and filmed their artistic creations.  In 1993, they moved to Brussels, which would be their home base for the remainder of their time together.

During the time of their collaboration, pieces from the unique oeuvre were exhibited as a work in progress in Belgium at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Ghent in 1996, the Belgium Film Museum, DEWEER Gallery, Documenta ’97, the Brussels Festival of the Arts ’98, and in England at London’s Anthony d’Offay Gallery and National Film Theater, among others.

In 1998, amidst great accolades, letters of support and offers of solo exhibitions throughout Europe, the members of Maquette decided to walk away from their collaboration for personal reasons.  They literally buried the costumes in large crates in the Belgian countryside and left the art world, always with the hope that the films would be edited and photographs catalogued so that Maquette could be exhibited in its fully realized form.

Stokes described the Gallery KM exhibition as “The culmination of a dream to present all of Maquette’s art in one exhibition. The show is a series of still and moving images that are vehicles for silent dances and visual poems bringing together masks, costumes, sets and performances into compelling individual tableaus.” 

Matthew Anthony Stokes went on to get an architectural degree with honors from Cambridge University and is presently the in-house architect at the LA design firm of Martyn Lawrence Bullard Design. Dirk Hendrikx is an artist living and working in Brussels, Belgium.  The two artists hope that the exhibition of Maquette 2011 – Ghosts of the Flash will lead to future collaborations. 

Gallery KM opened in Santa Monica, CA in September, 2010, dedicated to exhibiting contemporary Los Angeles artists in a wide range of mediums, and has since expanded programming to include international artists.  The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm, and by appointment. 

For Further Information:

Deb Klowden Mann

Gallery KM

2903 Santa Monica Blvd.

Santa Monica, CA 90404

310-828-1912 (gallery)

917-971-3857 (cell)

deb@gallerykmLa.com