Jonas Englert: Simultaneities

Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels, BE

On view until March 22, 2025, at Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels, Jonas Englert’s Simultaneities—his first solo exhibition in Belgium—showcases a selection of works created between 2015 and 2024, combining physical objects with still and moving images. Englert examines human gesture and touch through an interdisciplinary approach. His works engage with notions of intertextuality, teleology, and the sublime, unpacking layers of perception shaped by politics, history, and aesthetics.

The German artist analyzes moments of physical contact between political figures, exploring how these gestures carry symbolic weight, act as historical turning points, and offer interpretative possibilities. In Circles I & II (2019), a project that emerged from four years of archival research, we encounter these instances of skin-to-skin contact between political figures. Circles I takes the form of a seven-channel video sculpture, recalling a political monument, where found footage of leaders shaking hands and embracing forms a cyclical, choreographed pattern of touch. Circles II, its diagrammatic counterpart, charts these interactions in a continuous loop, recording names, dates, and locations to map an intricate network of political diplomacy. Together, the two pieces present an alternative historical framework structured through relational images that shape and inform each other.

Declaration of Principles (2022) continues this investigation into political touch through pictorial semiotics. This polyptych video painting deconstructs the well-known image of Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands at the White House in 1993, with Bill Clinton standing behind them. The triptych juxtaposes still and moving footage with historical visual references, such as Assyrian bas-reliefs and Renaissance paintings. Clinton’s gesture is set against compositions like Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St. Thomas (1600) and Lavinia Fontana’s Noli me Tangere (1581), referencing the power of touch in both belief and denial. The work further draws connections to historical agreements and collective pledges, from the French Tennis Court Oath (1789) to Benjamin West’s Penn’s Treaty (1770s). At the same time, it introduces an underlying tension—depicting William McKinley, who was assassinated while shaking hands, as a reminder of the potential violence embedded within diplomatic gestures.

Englert’s latest work, Song of None (2024), shifts towards an abstract exploration of the sensory. A three-channel installation, the piece arranges found footage into harmonized sequences of form and color sourced from scientific archives. Aerial landscapes, microscopic images of bacteria, and satellite footage evoke humanity’s insatiable drive to see and touch. The work questions the role of these seeing-devices and their legacy. What happens to images when there are no longer human eyes to perceive them? The earliest work in the exhibition, Praeludium (2015), focuses on the physicality of musical performance. In this two-channel video installation, a performer’s face and hands are captured as they play Bach’s prelude in F minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Slowed to an almost imperceptible pace, the work removes the organ from view, leaving only the hands in motion. The sound is barely audible, existing in low-frequency waves that resonate physically within the space.

For more information, please consult Harlan Levey Projects’ website here.