HANS OP DE BEECK - SEA OF TRANQUILLITY

Sea of Tranquility is the name of a high-tech cruise ship, supposedly the biggest in the world. The virtual ship was designed by visual artist Hans Op de Beeck, who also wrote and directed a short film about it. In his solo exhibition of the same name, conceived as a night-time museum with life-size sculptures, a cinema and large-scale watercolours, the artist explores the false mythology of this mysterious ship. This multi-faceted project is a reflection on contemporary patterns of labour, luxury, leisure and globalisation. It also addresses such eternal themes as Eros, Thanatos and tedium. Writers Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley were invited to produce a work of fiction for the project. In Sand, their first and fascinating novella, language becomes a sensory experience.

The book also contains a revealing interview with the artist by art critic Emmanuelle Lequeux and a CD recording of Sea of Tranquility, the jazz theme music composed for the film by Hans Op de Beeck himself.

Hans Op de Beeck - Sea of Tranquillity
20 x 47 cm, 168 pages & cd, English
In coproduction with ARGOS (Brussels), Le Grand Café (Saint-Nazaire), Kunstmuseum Thun (Thun), Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos (Burgos) and Studio Hans Op de Beeck (Brussels).

Headlines

1. Celebrating emptiness
2. Sand, a novella