Reproductions

Since moving to Brussels in 2012, Oriol Vilanova has been a regular visitor of the flea market on the Place du Jeu de Balle. This famous market is one of the oldest in Europe and still takes place every day in the Marolles, a historic neighbourhood in the city centre. The video installation Reproductions pays tribute to the market, which is an important source of inspiration for Vilanova's work. It is made up of thousands of snapshots he took over a period of ten years. In these pictures, he portrays the wares of the vendors, carefully arranged in free-form and fleeting constellations of paintings, coins, furniture pieces and more. Sixteen films, each starting at a different time, combine into a patchwork of images that constantly shift your gaze, making it almost impossible to focus on a single screen.

For many years, Oriol Vilanova has been scrutinising ideas of classification, collecting and museology. In the flea market he sees a temporary open-air museum where history is continually being processed, a place where transience and celebration converge. Reproductions also incorporates a form of resistance: against categorisation and against the dominant economics. Flea markets function as alternative marketplaces in which goods continue to circulate through negotiation, thereby challenging the traditional ideas of commerce and ownership.