To mark the confluence this spring of the openings of documenta 14 in Athens / Cassel, the Venice Biennale and the Skulptur Projekte Münster, Andreas Cinel has  created a programme titled Private View, Jef Cornelis on Art Events for the Casino Luxembourg’s Black Box of three films by the Belgian director Jef Cornelis. 

On 8 June, Cinel will present a special screening night focusing on the different strategies that Jef Cornelis employed to depict visual artists and to report about their exhibitions. The selected films give an account of major figures such as Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Jef Geys, Panamarenko, Andy Warhol, but they also investigate how exhibition, as a format, has evolved during the sixties through the eighties. 

Jef Cornelis, born in 1941, started his career in 1963 as director of the cultural department of the BRT, Flemish television. Between 1964 and 1998, he directed more than two hundred television programs, including debates, live shows, films on art, architecture and culture.

For Private View, Cinel has selected three films, produced between 1966 and 1987, that document each of these exhibitions in their time. 

Andreas Cinel is the curator of Argos, the Centre for Art and Media in Brussels. 

At the beginning of his career, Jef Cornelis was deeply involved in contemporary art, even though he was sometimes its detractor. In 1969 he was one of the founders of A379089, an alternative art centre in Antwerp, which was a self-styled "anti-museum" and "anti-gallery". 

On television he started 1966 with a film on the 33rd edition of the Venice Biennale and finished with documenta 5 in 1972. 

These films are not just reports. They show how these artistic events had become a phenomenon of society and how far the avant-garde was standardised. In addition to several feature films, he also directed short expositions of artists such as Marcel Broodthaers, Christo, Richard Hamilton, Martial Raysse and Andy Warhol.

By 1972, Jeff Cornelis had practically ceased his activities related to contemporary art before resuming them in the early 1980s. This was the time when the artists he had interviewed in the previous two decades had become inescapable actors on the international stage.

The exhibition will be in place from 31 May until 31 July. 

For more information, see: http://www.casino-luxembourg.lu/fr/Expositions/Private-View-Jef-Cornelis-on-art-events