Joost Elschot
Bernadette Zdrazil
Jan Tromp
Stijn Ter Braak
Brent Decraene
Ruben De Smet
Nina Marte Wilson
Emma Van Den Broeck
Guido Pupulin
Maika Garnica
and virtual. These can range from a rarely used corridor in a building to the storage space
of a gallery or museum, or from obscure archives to marginal subcultures. The material
sensibility of these artworks is often interspersed with elements that assume an
orchestrated act of vandalism, balancing between creation and destruction, or art and
non-art. The paradoxical nature of this work highlights the grey areas in society and the
art world.
The work often starts from the interaction between seeing and not seeing, showing or not
showing, censoring images. This creates an interplay between the conceptual framework
of visual art and the contemporary situation, in which loaded notions such as the pedestal
or the frame coexist alongside the smartphone camera or commercial prints. For
example, prints are formed that lack technical properties, but at the same time form a
new visual language. A method that can be described as destructive creation or,
conversely, creative destruction.
A tension is created between the artwork, the viewer and the exhibition space: in which
each is challenged to question and internalise their role. Furthermore, certain elements
recur repeatedly in the work, such as the use of parergon, e.g., pedestals and frames.
This recapitulation produces a particular focus on these elements, which permits them to
become tropes. Although the changing context in which they are used and seen also
allows them to be read differently each time. The repetition creates a fluidity in
interpretation, that allows the viewer to draw parallels with their own environment. The
resulting work is highly associative in nature and refers to a broad spectrum of subjects.
These can be Greek columns or medieval spells, but also contemporary subcultures such
as graffiti writing or internet culture.
The technical and material sensitivity of these art works presuppose an orchestrated
chaos. Contingencies arise and sprout possibilities for new work. Not only do my
installations and sculptures show traces of their own creative process. The transport and
assembly of the work often manifests itself anew in the presentation. Artworks can be
exhibited multiple times, acquiring new forms, inevitabilities and titles due to the changing
context. Sometimes they are also combined to create a new value system. For example,
by ‘carelessly’ stacking sculptures on top of each other, breaking through and questioning
the museological sanctuary in which art often exists. The work shows a process that is
not completed in the studio, but assesses its possibilities in a gallery, museum or public
space, preferably somewhere in the middle.
A kind of in-between space where the works and their associations can manoeuvre
through different contextual frameworks. I try to explore this backstage of the art world,
just as a film can imply off-screen elements without seemingly making them explicit.
This way of working forms a methodology to interpret and communicate references and
make way through the monolith of images with which we are inundated today.
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