Welcome back to the Endless Exhibition!
Under the title 'An Exhibition Is Never Finished', 6 artists from the ongoing 'Endless Exhibition' are returning to Kunsthal Gent, with various adjustments and new additions to the programme.
A characteristic of the 'Endless Exhibition' is the long-term cooperation that is established with artists. Kunsthal Gent reserves space, time and means to ensure that artists in the exhibition can respond to the changing context of the Endless Exhibition. Several works are thus never 'finished', but continue to actively relate to the changing context. *
On the occasion of this opening, Nina Beier rearranges and completes her collection of solid marble lions. Rudy Guedj projects 6 monumental drawings on the walls of the hall church on sunny days, through an intervention on several church windows. Martin Belou harvested the most beautiful agave plants around his studio in the south of France and brought them here. Charlotte Stuby added a new layer of meaning to her monumental textile work (now for the third time). Thomas Renwart turns his canvases inside out, creating space for new additions, and Prem Krishnamurthy tells a new story, which can be heard throughout the building every day, 12 minutes before closing time.
The building itself already bears the traces of a long history and is constantly being shaped further by new interventions by artists, which in turn can be called into question. We therefore invite you as a visitor to return regularly and actively spend time with the changing building. **
* What illustrates the special place of the works and the artists in this exhibition is that it proved necessary to develop an agreement that does justice to the special situation of a continuously changing exhibition: a normal contract did not suffice. We asked the legal advisors at TWIIID to advise us on this. From conversations with the first participants in the Endless Exhibition, they concluded that the relationship between Kunsthal, the artist and their work of art is one of long-term care. They subsequently developed a document based on the jurisprudence in foster care, because this legal figure is all about care. The document, which functions as an exhibition agreement, can be found here.
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‘Demand that visitors are active.’ Quote # 1, Manual Kunsthal Gent
‘Live with the exhibition, spend time with it.’ Quote # 1, Manual Kunsthal Gent
Rudy Guedj (1988, FR) is a graphic designer based in Amsterdam. He has worked on various commissioned and autonomous projects ranging from book design, exhibition design, animation, illustration and installation. His interest lies in exploring the processes at play during the construction of visual narratives and the de-/reconstruction of (architectural) spaces, often through drawing. He started the publishing imprint Building Fictions in 2017.
Martin Belou (1986) lives and works between Marseille and Brussels. Belou creates performative situations and experiences with the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Driven by intuition and traditional savoir-faire, he combines sculptures, drawings and organic materials (mushrooms, herbs, wood, stone, metal, chalk...) in installations that often have to do with universal notions of craftsmanship, tradition and community. He integrates ephemeral processes such as smoke or decomposition into his palette of materials, slowly but surely painting a new atmosphere. His work has been shown in various project spaces, institutes and galleries in France, Belgium, Mexico, Germany, the United States.
Thomas Renwart (°1995) graduated in 2019 from LUCA School of Arts, where he gained his masters in Textiles. From there, he developed a textile practice in which craftsmanship and poetic representations of a universe are constantly coming together. Craftsmanship, technicality, locality, handicraft and a dose of poetic hooliganism all interfere with and challenge each other. From his collections of dried and pressed daffodils and other flowers, of butterflies and textiles, he creates hybrids of landscapes and still lifes. Renwart develops his own fantasy world, which he carefully translates into tangible matter, using techniques such as jacquard weaving, embroidery, quilting, and digital printing. In addition to his textile work, Renwart also has a love for making artist books. His first artist book Comme si de rien n'était was published in early 2021 by MER.B&L. For his artistic research, Renwart was awarded two Henry Van de Velde 2021 Awards. Thomas Renwart is represented by Bruthausgallery.
Nina Beier (b. 1975, Denmark) lives and works in Berlin. Beier has had one-person exhibitions at Spike Island, Bristol; CAC, Vilnius; the Kunstverein in Hamburg; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp; Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland and her work has been shown at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; ICA, London; Swiss Institute, New York; the Power Station, Shanghai; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Kunsthaus Zürich; National Gallery, Prague; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Performa 15, New York, 13th Biennale de Lyon, the Baltic Triennial 13 and the 20th Biennale of Sydney.
Charlotte Stuby (1989, CH) lives and works in Brussels. After a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at ECwAL in Lausanne (CH) in 2013, Stuby continued her studies in Belgium and obtained a Master’s degree in Textile Design at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in 2017. She participated in several exhibitions in Switzerland (Pazioli, La Placette, Indiana) and Belgium: in Ghent (019, Museum of Moving Practice), Brussels (Sagacity), Leuven (LUCA Biennale). Her book Creature in Reality was published in 2018 by Grafische Cel, LUCA School of Arts, Ghent.
Prem Krishnamurthy is based in Berlin and New York. He is a partner and director of the multidisciplinary design practice Wkshps. Previously, he was a founder of the design studio Project Projects, winner of the Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award. He serves as co-Artistic Director of FRONT International 2021, the contemporary art triennial in Cleveland and Northern Ohio. As an independent exhibition maker, he was an Artistic Director of the inaugural Fikra Graphic Design Biennial, Ministry of Graphic Design, and has curated exhibitions internationally including at P!, the acclaimed "Mom-and-Pop-Kunsthalle" that he founded in New York’s Chinatown in 2012. He has written for numerous catalogues and magazines and has edited books with Berkeley Art Museum, Cabinet Books, Duke University Press, Paper Monument, and others. His first book, the experimental memoir/ monograph/ manifesto, P!DF, was published by O-R-G in 2017.