#90: The best systems have a failure or ‘a hole’ in them…|#37: Operate with radical transparency.|#16: Kunsthal Gent will always be a construction site.|#10: Don’t be obsessed with numbers.|#82: Clean and sterile looks professional, but really boring.|#98: The success of it will not lie in the result but in the process.|#19: Have fun at the exhibition.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#35: The artist fee should be good.|#119: Be a space of production.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|#120: The new type of art institute cannot merely be an art museum as it has been until now, but no museum at all. The new type will be more like a power station, a producer of new energy.|#30: Don’t work with artists who are assholes.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#2: Bring something new to the city of Ghent.|#24: We invest long-term in individual artists’ careers, working over time in different contexts. This also applies to designers / web-developers / photographers / volunteers /…|#94: No objections? Just do it.|#75: A building is a capricious thing: it is inhabited and changed, and its existence is a tale of constant and curious transformation.|#130: Be a uniquely charged and curated gallery that is an artwork in itself.|#20: Are exhibitions the most suitable form for the art that we present?|#62: Be kind. Full dishwasher: empty it.|#23: That’s a very interesting piece, but how would it behave in a pizza joint?|#25: Never ask the artist to just present their work, ask them to co-create and co-organise the space.|#87: Always keep in mind there is something really special about being in a room that is 19 meters tall.|#90: The best systems have a failure or ‘a hole’ in them…|#37: Operate with radical transparency.|#16: Kunsthal Gent will always be a construction site.|#10: Don’t be obsessed with numbers.|#82: Clean and sterile looks professional, but really boring.|#98: The success of it will not lie in the result but in the process.|#19: Have fun at the exhibition.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#35: The artist fee should be good.|#119: Be a space of production.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|#120: The new type of art institute cannot merely be an art museum as it has been until now, but no museum at all. The new type will be more like a power station, a producer of new energy.|#30: Don’t work with artists who are assholes.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#2: Bring something new to the city of Ghent.|#24: We invest long-term in individual artists’ careers, working over time in different contexts. This also applies to designers / web-developers / photographers / volunteers /…|#94: No objections? Just do it.|#75: A building is a capricious thing: it is inhabited and changed, and its existence is a tale of constant and curious transformation.|#130: Be a uniquely charged and curated gallery that is an artwork in itself.|#20: Are exhibitions the most suitable form for the art that we present?|#62: Be kind. Full dishwasher: empty it.|#23: That’s a very interesting piece, but how would it behave in a pizza joint?|#25: Never ask the artist to just present their work, ask them to co-create and co-organise the space.|#87: Always keep in mind there is something really special about being in a room that is 19 meters tall.|
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Opening: 29.01.2021 – 20:00

29.01—∞

Exhibition

Bram De Jonghe:
WISHBONE

Wishbone by Bram De Jonghe (Ostend, 1985) is the 14th addition to the Endless Exhibition. The monumental steel construction that plays with the form language of water, also occupies the last free space in the hall church.

Just as the term wishbone has several meanings, Bram De Jonghe's intervention embodies a plurality of meanings and connotations. A wishbone is a fork-shaped bone found in birds and certain dinosaurs, enabling them to fly. But it is also a term for a formation in American football and refers to a wheel suspension system in the car industry.

On his first visit to Kunsthal Gent, Bram became fascinated by the underfloor heating system in the hall church. This system of invisible, closed tubes, that was installed during the renovations in the 1990s, runs above the many graves hidden under the floor of the former Carmelite monastery. This invisible closed circuit, with water that has been circulating for many years, radiates heat both above and below the ground. It reminded him of "Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz", a work that Joseph Beuys created in 1977 for the Dokumenta in Kassel: a closed system that collects and transports energy in space.[1]

In analogy with Beuys' work, Bram therefore saw the underfloor heating as an absurd intervention by an anonymous artist, in an attempt to honour the dead, to warm their spirits and capture them in the water that is pumped around above their graves. With this in mind, one can assume that the water by now has been transformed into consecrated water.

It is said (and scientifically disputed[2]) that water has a memory. In any case, the underfloor heating was the starting point for this work.The sculpture's formal language is that of water, and also recalls everything that lives in water. The sculpture's form language is that of water, and also recalls everything that lives in water. A two-dimensional form was sawn from metal sheets and welded together. By means of water under high pressure, the two-dimensional forms gain volume and a third dimension is added. This allows for a hard, flat surface to be elevated to a poetic sculpture, as magical as it is marginal.

It is precisely the space of transition between inspiration and the final work that fascinates Bram as a sculptor. The context adds resonance, as with dried hams maturing, dangling in an old building.

[1] Beuys said of the “Honigpumpe”: "The whole structure is completed only by the people in the room through which the honey pump flows." By this, Beuys was referring to the discussion platform he installed in a room near the honey pump, the Free International University (FIU), which was an integral part of the work.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory

Bram De Jonghe (b. 1985, Ostend) relates to his surroundings like a sculptor. His spatial interventions respond to the (exhibition) space: to imperfect architecture, to the neutrality of an exhibition space, or to the way people walk into a space. In these areas, he looks for tension. However, his work also has an origin in the studio, where "the mould" and the resulting negative is a classic sculptural principle that he often applies. These influences come together in spatial interventions by which he tries to bypass the real history of the place and draws attention to simple things - casually, but with a grand spatial gesture.

Bram De Jonghe studied at St. Lucas in Ghent between 2003 and 2009 and teaches sculpture at the KABK The Hague. In 2015 he won the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs. He had solo exhibitions at Stroom Den Haag (2014), at Art Rotterdam (2016) and in Ghent at These Things Take Time (2015).


Bram De Jonghe:
WISHBONE

MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 005 LR

EXHIBITION VIEWS
MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 002 LR
MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 001 LR
MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 003 LR
MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 006 LR
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MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 007 LR
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MDC KHG 20210129 BDJ 014 LR