Merry Go Round

“Merry Go Round” by Hans Op de Beeck is a C-print edition from 2005, issued in an edition of 100 copies. It was published by the now-defunct Austrian publisher Frame Editions. Our copy is finished to professional museum standards: mounted using the Diasec process behind 4 mm plexiglass, with a Dibond backing and an aluminium hanging frame.

The work is signed and numbered on the accompanying original edition sticker.

The photograph refers back to a phenomenal sculptural multimedia installation by the artist, realised for Art Basel in 2005.

The carousel is a recurring motif in the oeuvre of Hans Op de Beeck. It appears as video, installation and photograph, and over the years he has also produced several watercolours depicting a carousel. In 2021, Hans Op de Beeck created a monumental, monochrome carousel installation entitled “Danse Macabre” for the Bruges Triennial. Absolutely worth a visit!

What does the artist himself say about this?

“Since my student days in the 1990s at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, I have been fascinated by the carousel. The carousel as a kind of grotesque, gigantic, cream-cake-like construction in which entertainment is staged. There is always something sad about a mechanical structure conceived by humans to entertain themselves. The carousel ‘Danse Macabre’ is entirely monochrome grey, giving it a petrified quality, as if it were a fully concrete, motionless element. The festive details relate to the sweet memory that I also want to evoke. The Bruges exhibition concept (TraumA) also points to the less attractive past of the city that may lie hidden beneath its polished exterior. This ambivalence is also present in this carousel: you have the charming ornaments, the beauty, and yet the subjects also evoke death and the aspects of life that are not easy.”