Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys

Live in Brussels, Belgium

Jos de Gruyter Born 1965, Geel, Belgium

Harald Thys Born 1966 Wilrijk, Belgium

Visual Artists

Our collaborative work is rooted in a folksy, tragicomic sensibility honed into an experimental dramaturgy. The video and photographic works use simple, symbolic sets, including the paradigmatic spaces of home, battlefield, urban periphery and community hall. We have engaged a recurring cast of nonprofessional actors as well as invented or adopted personae spanning the forms of puppets, dummies, plush animals, makeshift robots and rejected toys. These characters continually rehearse power dynamics and emotional entanglements, creating worlds not unlike our own, yet more focused, bizarre and bleak. We seek ways to confront marginal, incapacitated, lost and alienated subjects without defining these 'others' in sociological terms. In this sense, and especially in our novel use of a ghoulish humor, we broaden the scope of reflection on socially produced behavior.

Jos De Gruyter

1957-1997 Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1987-1992 Institute for Fine Arts, Sint-Lukas Brussels, Belgium

Harald Thys

1997-1999 Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, The Netherlands

1987-1992 Institute for Fine Arts, Sint-Lukas Brussels, Belgium

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2011 NAK, Aachen, Germany

2011 Kestner Geselchaft, Hannover, Germany

2011 Culturgest, Porto, Portugal

2011 ICA, London, England

2010 Gallery Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Germany

2010 Frieze Art Fair, London, England

2010 Projekt 13, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland

2009 Culturgest, LIsbon, Portugal

2009 Kaleidoscope, Milan, Italy

2009 Pro Choice, Vienna, Austria

2009 Gallery Dependance, Brussels, Belgium

2008 Gallery Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Germany

2007 FRAC Ile-de-France Le Plateau, Paris, France

2007 Gallery Artspeak, Vancouver, Canada

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010 Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium

2010 Public Private Painting, Muzee, Ostend, Belgium

2009 The Thing, MHKA at Mechelen, Belgium

2009 Double Happiness, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium

2009 Un-Scene, Wiels, Brussels, Belgium

2008 Manifesta 7, Trento, Italy

2008 Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany

2007 Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2007 The Go Between, De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands