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.
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
