Furnishing your living room is like making a self-portrait. In 'A Stage Matrix' the performer plays with a furniture machine that has a will of its own. As a spectator you cannot help asking yourself if it's the performer who is portraying the piece of furniture or the other way around. Nothing is as it seems and practical logic has disappeared. Soulimenko submits himself to this ritual as if he has just tumbled straight out of a Kafka book in a Magritte painting...
Since the mid-90s, the Russian Oleg Soulimenko has lived and worked in Vienna. After training to be an engineer he studied dance and movement, concentrating on improvisation. He worked together with Meg Stuart, Vera Mantero, Steve Paxton and Jennifer Lacey. Although he set up various groups, in recent years he has gone his own way, often together with the well-known artist Markus Schinwald. There will be an exhibition by this young Austrian artist at Argos (Brussels, www.argos.be), opening on 22 April.