27/04 - 02/05
Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci | Palacký University Olomouc
Filozofická fakulta - Katedra dějin umění | Faculty of Arts - Department of Art History
Univerzitní 3 | 779 00 Olomouc | CZ
Focus: AcademicCette conférence est dédiée aux politiques d'exposition et de stockage qui sont au cœur du musée. Les politiques d'exposition et de stockage se déroulent par défaut dans l'espace et ont donc des ramifications architecturales. Le stockage n'est pas seulement une question de politique, mais aussi de poétique.Les politiques institutionnelles de stockage et de divulgation méritent des politiques architecturales de stockage et de divulgation doté d’imagination.
Journée d'Etude du Groupe de Contact FNRS "Musées et Art Contemporain"
Focus: Academic“Out of Necessity.” Art and Architecture in the work of Robbrecht and Daem Architects
https://www.gbl.tuwien.ac.at/wouterdavidtslecture/
Over the course of the past three decades Ghent-based architects Robbrecht en Daem have worked together with more than a dozen artists, ranging from Raoul De Keyser, Isa Genzken, Cristina Iglesias, Juan Muñoz, Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans, Franz West to Rachel Whiteread. They invited artists to make work for projects of domestic, administrative, social, cultural and even urban nature. In his talk Wouter Davidts will explore the architect Paul Robbrecht’s statement that the decision to involve artists and to make art present in their architecture grew ‚out of necessity.‘ He will present some key collaborative projects between Robbrecht en Daem and artists, while asking why the former turned to the latter in the first place. Why art? And even more crudely: why art necessarily?
Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. He teaches at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies of Ghent University (UGent). He has published widely on the museum, contemporary art and architecture.
Focus: Academic Publication(s):“Not so much a line as a star” Donald Judd and The Low Countries (1966-71)
Donald Judd’s rising reputation and fame in the United States in the second half of the 1960s, epitomized by his ground-breaking show at the Green Gallery in New York in 1963-64 and the widely acclaimed solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1968 and the Pasadena Art Museum in Pasadena California in 1971, have shaped a picture of the artist’s early career as a predominantly American affair. Within the historical and critical reception of Judd rarely any attention has been paid to the initially modest but then significant exposure the artist benefited in Europe in the second half of the 1960s. Little is known about the five years in between the artist’s first inclusion in a group show in Stockholm in 1965-66 – which in fact ‘premiered’ the very first wall stack by artist (Untitled, 1965; DSS 65) – up until his first solo show in Europe at the Municipal Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 1970.
Mapping out the earliest instances of Judd’s exposure in the Europe in the second half of the 1960s, this talk hopes to reveal that in the very same era that Judd establishes his formal and conceptual language in the United States, his work meets with substantial institutional support as well as nuanced critical reception at the other side of the Atlantic.
Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp. He teaches at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies of Ghent University (UGent). In 2015 he was awarded the Eduardo Chillida Professorship at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and In 2016 he was a Visiting Fellow at ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) research centre of the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
He has published widely on the museum, contemporary art and architecture and is author of two volumes on museum architecture, Bouwen voor de kunst? (A&S/books, 2006) and Triple Bond (Valiz, 2017). He is editor of such volumes as The Fall of the Studio (2009) and Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (2012; with Stefaan Vervoort and Guy Châtel). He was the curator of The Corner Show (2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten).
In his current research he focuses on the reception of American Art in the Low Countries.
Focus: Societal value creation Publication(s):Een museum waar de dingen overlappen. Robbrecht en Daem en het Boijmans van Beuningen
https://www.airrotterdam.eu/over-de-stad-gesproken-kijken-naar-boijmans/
Focus: Societal value creation Publication(s):https://kunsten.nu/journal/kunstneratelieret-til-debat/
Focus: Societal value creationhttps://vimeo.com/63659064
Focus: AcademicKunstkenner Wouter Davidts: "Absurdisme in de kunst is van alle tijden"
De onlangs overleden Belgische kunstenaar Guillaume Bijl wist de absurditeit van onze realiteit te vangen in zijn werken. Maar wat is dat nu precies, absurdisme? Wouter Davidts, Professor moderne en hedendaagse kunst aan de Universiteit Gent.
Fifty years after Art Systems in Latin America first set foot in Antwerp, M HKA is dedicating an archival presentation to the exhibition. Art Systems in Latin America is an exhibition of contemporary Latin American art that traveled to Antwerp, Brussels, London, Paris, and Ferrara in the years 1974-75.
orge Glusberg, director of the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC) in Buenos Aires organized the exhibition in collaboration with Florent Bex, director of the International Cultural Centre (ICC) in Antwerp. Together with the artworks in the exhibition, some twenty Latin American artists traveled to Belgium. For several of them, this relocation marked the beginning of a fascinating journey through Europe during which new encounters and new places would leave a lasting impression on their work.
Drawing on a selection of archival documents, the presentation highlights the new forms of mobility introduced by this art in the mid-1970s. Aspects ranging from transportation, migration, portable art (systems) to political mobilization are framed within the broader artistic, institutional, and cultural-political context of the 1960s and 70s.
Art Systems in Latin America. A traveling exhibition from Buenos Aires (1974-75) is curated by Ine Engels, Elize Mazadiego (Bern University), Wouter Davidts and the research group KB45.
Focus: AcademicEight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent from 1990 to 1998: a cross-reference exhibition of information on the presence of an American artist in a Belgian city: consisting of a spatial chronology into which are inserted texts, artworks, archival documents, and books, focused on the relationship between an international artist and a local art community, with mentions of the reciprocity between work, partnership, family and household, edited and curated by Gertjan Oskar and Wouter Davidts.
In 1990, American artist Joseph Kosuth, pioneer of conceptual art, settles in Belgium. After several artistic passages in the city in the 1970s and 1980s, he moves both his studio and household from the New York metropolis to manor house in the Maagdestraat in Ghent. Together with his wife, art historian and curator Cornelia Lauf, and later their two children, he continues to live there until 1998.
The exhibition Eight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent (...) presents traces of Kosuth's presence and activities in Ghent before, during and after his stay in Ghent. Using an extensive selection of historical documents, photographs, press, publications, books, works of art and letters from both private and institutional archives, the exhibition sheds light on the forcefield between the international artworld and a specific locality on the one hand, and the private life and public work of an artist on the other. The exhibition shows that a contemporary art practice always develops in a complex network of international contacts and local players, but also always involves a social dynamic between artist and partner, family, colleagues and friends.
Eight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent (...) is conceived at once as a chronological arrangement of the rich palette of sources that an art-historical investigation provides, as well as a spatial representation of the record of the diverse evidence it yields.
The exhibition results from the research conducted in the framework of a Bachelor and Master thesis in Art Science by Gertjan Oskar, under the supervision of Prof. Wouter Davidts. The research took place within the context of the research group KB45 (Art in Belgium since 1945) on domestic and foreign protagonists within the post-war field of contemporary art in Belgium. The exhibition was realized with the support of VANDENHOVE, Faculty of Arts & Philosophy (UGent) and KB45.
Curators: Gertjan Oskar & Wouter Davidts (KB45)
Exhibition Architecture: Kris Coremans, SSA/XX
Graphic design: Pauline Scharmann
Production: Bram Vandeveire, Geertrui Ivens, Veerle Soens
Installation: Louis Carlier, Dennis Cool, Viktor Dedeyn, Ine Engels, Lina Michels, Mila Letombe, Fay De Maesschalck, Casper Vervenne, Anton Pereira Rodriguez, Liza Van Ongeval
Focus: AcademicEight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent from 1990 to 1998: a cross-reference exhibition of information on the presence of an American artist in a Belgian city: consisting of a spatial chronology into which are inserted texts, artworks, archival documents, and books, focused on the relationship between an international artist and a local art community, with mentions of the reciprocity between work, partnership, family and household, edited and curated by Gertjan Oskar and Wouter Davidts.
In 1990, American artist Joseph Kosuth, pioneer of conceptual art, settles in Belgium. After several artistic passages in the city in the 1970s and 1980s, he moves both his studio and household from the New York metropolis to manor house in the Maagdestraat in Ghent. Together with his wife, art historian and curator Cornelia Lauf, and later their two children, he continues to live there until 1998.
The exhibition Eight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent (...) presents traces of Kosuth's presence and activities in Ghent before, during and after his stay in Ghent. Using an extensive selection of historical documents, photographs, press, publications, books, works of art and letters from both private and institutional archives, the exhibition sheds light on the forcefield between the international artworld and a specific locality on the one hand, and the private life and public work of an artist on the other. The exhibition shows that a contemporary art practice always develops in a complex network of international contacts and local players, but also always involves a social dynamic between artist and partner, family, colleagues and friends.
Eight Years: Joseph Kosuth in Ghent (...) is conceived at once as a chronological arrangement of the rich palette of sources that an art-historical investigation provides, as well as a spatial representation of the record of the diverse evidence it yields.
The exhibition results from the research conducted in the framework of a Bachelor and Master thesis in Art Science by Gertjan Oskar, under the supervision of Prof. Wouter Davidts. The research took place within the context of the research group KB45 (Art in Belgium since 1945) on domestic and foreign protagonists within the post-war field of contemporary art in Belgium. The exhibition was realized with the support of VANDENHOVE, Faculty of Arts & Philosophy (UGent) and KB45.
Parallel to the exhibition, Joseph Kosuth realized a billboard for 019 and Artlead in the Ghent Harbour.
Billboard Series #30 (05/10/2023 – 18/02/2024)
Joseph Kosuth, Misfortune | Happiness, 2023
https://artlead.net/project/billboard-series-30-joseph-kosuth
Curators: Gertjan Oskar & Wouter Davidts, KB45 (Kunst in België sinds 1945) research Group, UGent
Exhibition Architecture: Kris Coremans, SSA/XX
Graphic design: Pauline Scharmann
The autumn 2023 archive presentation at M HKA is dedicated to three exhibitions of contemporary art that made up the main Visual Arts programme of the project Antwerp 93, European Capital of Culture. Under the direction of Bart Cassiman (°1961), exhibitions were organised at the Middelheim (New Sculptures), the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (The Sublime Void. On the Memory of the Imagination) and the MUHKA (On Taking a Normal Situation and Retranslating it into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and Present). Three decades later, Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art looks back at the role, place and significance of these three exhibitions within the Antwerp 93 project with documents from both public and private archives.
Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art is curated in collaboration with M HKA by Eléa De Winter, Wouter Davidts and the KB45 research group (Art in Belgium since 1945, Ghent University), with an exhibition design by Kris Coremans (ssa/xx) and graphic design by Pauline Scharmann. The exhibition will be on view from 6 October 2023 to 7 January 2024.
In parallel with the exhibition, the KB45 research group is organising the study day Dossier Antwerp 93 at the end of October, in collaboration with the Centre for Urban History of the University of Antwerp (Prof. Ilja Van Damme) and with the support of UGent (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy), M HKA, De Cinema and stadsarchief/FelixArchief.
The multidisciplinary research group KB45 (Art in Belgium since 1945, Ghent University), led by Prof. Wouter Davidts, aims to outline the current position of living art in Belgium and frame it within the broader artistic culture in Belgium in the post-war period, both from a local and international perspective.
The exhibition Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art was realised with a team of Master students from the Engineering-Architecture and Art Sciences programmes at Ghent University (Rik Claeys, Dennis Cool, Viktor De Deyn, Senne De Ridder, Lina Michels, Cas Neels, Luca-Ray Rogiers and Liza Van Ongeval).
Focus: AcademicMuurschildering
Koen van den Broek, Plants, Shadows and Models (mural), 2023
VANDENHOVE Centrum voor Architectuur & Kunst, Universiteit Gent
Rozier 1, 9000 Gent
Op 16 februari 2023 huldigde VANDENHOVE – Centrum voor Architectuur en Kunst, het kunstwerk Plants, Shadows and Models (mural) van kunstenaar Koen van den Broek, officieel in.
Met de muurschildering van Koen van den Broek in het auditorium op het gelijkvloers van het Vandenhove-paviljoen wordt een van de laatste ontwerpen van de architect Charles Vandenhove voltooid met een uniek kunstwerk, gemaakt op maat van het gebouw. Naar het voorbeeld van de zittingzalen van het Justitiepaleis van Den Bosch in Nederland, afgewerkt met wandtapijten van o.a. Marlène Dumas, Jeff Wall, Luc Tuymans, had de architect voor het resterende wandoppervlak boven de lambrisering in het auditorium een gelijkaardig project voor ogen, deze keer in samenwerking met Koen van den Broek. Door de ziekte en het overlijden van Vandenhove in 2019 bleef het project evenwel ongerealiseerd. In 2021 werd de draad met van den Broek terug opgepikt. Met de steun van de Koning Boudewijnstichting/Fonds Vandenhove heeft de kunstenaar in januari 2023 de wandschildering Plants, Shadows and Models (mural) kunnen realiseren.
Naar aanleiding van de plechtige inhuldiging van de muurschildering Plants, Shadows and Models (mural) in het auditorium op het gelijkvloers van VANDENHOVE, is er in de tentoonstellingsruimte op de eerste verdieping een tentoonstelling te zien met de foto’s, ontwerptekeningen en -schetsen voor het werk, aangevuld met een ensemble van oude en recente werken van Koen van den Broek. De samenstelling van de tentoonstelling was in handen van de kunstenaar en Prof. Wouter Davidts, het tentoonstellingsontwerp is van Rik Claeys (Master student ir. architect). Astrid Berlengé en Ella Ooms (Master studenten ir. architect) stonden in voor het grafisch ontwerp van de begeleidende publicatie.
Muurschildering
Koen van den Broek, Plants, Shadows and Models (mural), 2023
Materialen: Olieverf, oliekrijt, houtskool en potlood op akoestisch wandpaneel
Afmetingen: (drie delen): 831 x 45; 1605 x 45; 820 145 cm (l x h)
VANDENHOVE Centrum voor Architectuur & Kunst, Universiteit Gent
Rozier 1, 9000 Gent
Tentoonstelling
Koen van den Broek, Plants, Shadows and Models (mural), 2023
Curatoren: Koen van den Broek en Wouter Davidts
Tentoonstellingsontwerp: Rik Claeys
https://www.ugent.be/vandenhove/nl/tentoonstellingen/koen-van-den-broek-plants-shadows-and-models-mural
https://www.ugent.be/vandenhove/nl/fotoalbums/fotos-plants-shadows-and-models-mural
In the book Species of Spaces (Espèces d’espaces, 1974) French novelist and philosopher Georges Perec elaborates on the predicament of understanding space. “The space of our lives is neither continuous, nor infinite, neither homogeneous, nor isotropic.” To get a better sense of space, Perec argues, the challenge is not so much “to reinvent space, … but to question it, or even simpler, to read it.” His subject is not the void exactly, but rather what might be round about or inside it:
“When nothing arrests our gaze, it carries a very long way. But if it meets with nothing, it sees nothing, it sees only what it meets. Space is what arrests our gaze, what our sight stumbles over: the obstacle, the bricks, an angle, a vanishing point. Space is when it makes an angle, when it stops, when we have to turn for it to start off again.”
Eromheen of erin (Round About or Inside) aims to explore how artists from different geographic and cultural contexts might contribute to Perec’s attempt to map and describe the manifold spaces and sites that mark our lives. To what extent do art and artists partake in defining, shaping and ultimately understanding the spatialities of worldmaking?
The artists included in this exhibition have not been invited to illustrate the many observations and guidelines provided by Perec, but to bring to the gallery works that reflect their own modes and means of apprehending space. Their positions are as rich as they are diverse, addressing space as a pictorial substance, a field defining the relationship between land and being, a bodily feature, an architectural material, the sphere of social gathering and exclusion, an arena of ritual exchange, a new way to negotiate gallery spaces, a feat of technological exploration, and a realm of administrative organisation.
Artists: Paul Bai (AUS), Elizabeth Djakurrurr (AUS), Valérie Mannaerts (BE), Philip Metten (BE), Archie Moore (AUS), Yukultji Napangati (AUS), Brian O’Doherty (USA), Sarah Oppenheimer (USA), Steve Van den Bosch (BE)
Exhibition architecture: Guy Châtel (BE)
Curators: Wouter Davidts (BE) and Angela Goddard (AUS)
ps://www.ugent.be/vandenhove/nl/tentoonstellingen/archief/eromheen-of-erin
https://www.ugent.be/vandenhove/nl/fotoalbums/fotos-roundabout-or-inside
Focus: Academic4 April 1922, Brussels Town Hall: The date when the Centre for Fine Arts (‘Palais des Beaux-Arts’) was officially launched. The judicial basis for the construction and the associated ambition of creating an arts centre had become a reality. The statutes that establish this historic moment are the starting point for centenary celebrations that begin with the Project Palace exhibition and a celebratory programme in April 2022.
Bozar, together with curator Wouter Davidts (UGent), has invited 10 artists to participate in the celebrations by producing new work that reflects on what an arts centre such as Bozar can and should be now and into the future. They focus on the arts centre today, as well as offer glimpses of its long history – including the chance to view a number of works exhibited in the past that will return to the Palace of Fine Arts. Rather than a history of the ‘Palace,’ the exhibition will act as an artistic retelling and a look to the future.
Invited Artists: Lara Almarcegui, Jeremiah Day, Sylvie Eyberg, Liam Gillick, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Lynn Cassiers, Koen van den Broek, Sammy Baloji & Johan Lagae & Traumnovelle, Auguste Orts (Herman Asselberghs, Sven Augustijnen, Manon de Boer, Anouk De Clercq, Fairuz Ghammam)
Special Guests: Chantal Akerman, Ann Teresa De Keersmaeker, Raoul De Keyser, Duke Ellington, Olivier Foulon, Vic Gentils, Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Jane Graverol, Sandra Heremans, Guy Mees, Jaqueline Mesmaeker, Sergej Rachmaninov, Michael Van den Abeele, Raphäel Vanlerberghe, and Jan Vercruysse
Curator: Wouter Davidts, Ghent University
https://www.bozar.be/nl/kalender/project-paleis-een-eeuwfeest
Focus: Societal value creation Publication(s):In the book Species of Spaces (Espèces d’espaces, 1974) French novelist and philosopher Georges Perec elaborates on the predicament of understanding space. “The space of our lives is neither continuous, nor infinite, neither homogeneous, nor isotropic.” To get a better sense of space, Perec argues, the challenge is not so much “to reinvent space, … but to question it, or even simpler, to read it.” His subject is not the void exactly, but rather what might be round about or inside it:
“When nothing arrests our gaze, it carries a very long way. But if it meets with nothing, it sees nothing, it sees only what it meets. Space is what arrests our gaze, what our sight stumbles over: the obstacle, the bricks, an angle, a vanishing point. Space is when it makes an angle, when it stops, when we have to turn for it to start off again.”
Round About or Inside aims to explore how artists from different geographic and cultural contexts might contribute to Perec’s attempt to map and describe the manifold spaces and sites that mark our lives. To what extent do art and artists partake in defining, shaping and ultimately understanding the spatialities of worldmaking?
The artists included in this exhibition have not been invited to illustrate the many observations and guidelines provided by Perec, but to bring to the gallery works that reflect their own modes and means of apprehending space. Their positions are as rich as they are diverse, addressing space as a pictorial substance, a field defining the relationship between land and being, a bodily feature, an architectural material, the sphere of social gathering and exclusion, an arena of ritual exchange, a new way to negotiate gallery spaces, a feat of technological exploration, and a realm of administrative organisation.
Artists: Paul Bai (AUS), Elizabeth Djakurrurr (AUS), Valérie Mannaerts (BEL), Philip Metten (BEL), Archie Moore (AUS), Yukultji Napangati (AUS), Brian O’Doherty (USA), Sarah Oppenheimer (USA), Steve Van den Bosch (BEL)
Scenography: Ashley Paine (AUS)
Curators: Wouter Davidts (BEL) and Angela Goddard (AUS)
https://www.griffith.edu.au/art-museum/whats-on/2021/round-about-or-inside
Focus: Academic Publication(s):Following a major retrospective at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, BOZAR opens its doors to James Casebere. This American photographer studied with John Baldessari and obtained his Master of Arts from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). His work is marked by a profound interest in architecture. Yet rather than focusing his lens on the actual buildings, he makes scale models of them, which he then photographs.
During the International Biennial of Photography Casebere presents an intricate ensemble of domestic interiors and settings in the antechambers of Victor Horta’s Centre for Fine Arts. Three works mark the historical link between the artist, Brussels and Belgium: Screw Device (1991), Cell with Rubble (1996) and Turning Hallway (2003).
Corners are everywhere: not only rooms have corners, but so do streets, objects, paintings, screens and pages. Corners are among the many modes of delineation that enclose space and demarcate routes, that increase or delimit areas of possibility. They epitomize the different ways in which structures and systems at once foster and limit our movements or actions in daily experience.
Questions about the space, function and figure of the corner appear in a variety of artistic and architectural practices. ‘Untitled (Corner Piece)’ (1964), by Robert Morris has become a key work in the art history of the past decades. As it occupied an exceptional space in the traditional gallery, it became a reference for the spatial strategies developed by artists after Minimalism, and for the manifold ‘corner pieces’ artists have produced ever since.
While ‘The Corner Show’ knowingly relates to this art historical canon, it adopts a deliberate contemporary vantage point. The exhibition outlines the conceptual and visual reasons for which certain works inhabit the edges of exhibition spaces, engaging the viewer in particular ways and deflecting attention from the ‘center of the stage’. But rather than a collection of corner pieces, the exhibition draws upon conversations with participating artists and assembles different contributions from each in a multi-perspectival puzzle, zooming in and out of different modes of spatial presence and spatial address. Bringing together a wide range of practitioners, stemming from different disciplines – from art, architecture, music to theatre – and working with different media – sculpture, painting, film, photography, performance as well as design – the exhibition aims to explore how the corner suggests itself as solution, station or metaphor in investigations that stem from different artistic premises, or advance different conceptual propositions.
Within a sculptural scenography conceived by artist Philip Metten, ‘The Corner Show’ brings together existing, adapted and commissioned works that either occupy, scrutinize or challenge the most commonplace, overlooked and intricate architectural feature of both exhibition space and daily environment.
Curated by Wouter Davidts in collaboration with Philip Metten and Mihnea Mircan
Participating artists: Accattone, Wim Catrysse, Céline Condorelli, Jan De Cock, Ferry André de la Porte, Willem de Rooij, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Maatschappij Discordia, Lili Dujourie, Kersten Geers, Aglaia Konrad, Germaine Kruip, Gabriel Kuri, Valérie Mannaerts, Katja Mater, Josiah McElheny, Manfred Pernice, Bas Schevers, Santiago Sierra, Steve Van den Bosch, Koen van den Broek, Joep van Liefland and Philippe Van Snick
In collaboration with A+ Architecture in Belgium, theatre company De Tijd and the Sculpture Program of the Ghent Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK).
https://extracitykunsthal.org/tentoonstellingen/the-corner-show
Focus: Societal value creationLuc Deleu is one of Belgium’s most innovative and radical urbanist thinkers. Together with T.O.P. office, the architectural firm Deleu founded in 1970, the architect by training has developed an intriguing and consistent oeuvre, spanning more than four decades and constantly challenging the discipline of architecture to rise to its global-scale responsibilities. This exhibition, curated by Wouter Davidts and Stefaan Vervoort in dialogue with T.O.P. office, focuses on Orban Space, the ‘research by design’ project initiated by Luc Deleu in 2006, aiming to expand current notions of public space to the scale of the earth, and recalculate urbanism as orbanism. Continuously updated, the project builds upon streams of spatial, sociological and economic data, suggesting alternative models of resource distribution to the totality of earth’s population.
The exhibition intends to unveil and articulate new perspectives and ensembles within the oeuvre of Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office. To this end, it advances and elaborates upon five thematic clusters: devices, media, dimensions, movements, and realities. Neither conclusive nor exhaustive, these clusters retrace, condense and interconnect many recurrent operations, actions and strategies that mark the practice of Deleu – T.O.P. office over the past decades.
In a unique scenography devised by T.O.P. office, the exhibition distributes a selection of previous works and projects around the recent results of Orban Space. Newly produced work is put into historical perspective by means of a selection of sketches, models, design tools and archival documents produced since the late ‘60s, many of which have not been exhibited to this date.
Curated by Wouter Davidts & Stefaan Vervoort in dialogue with Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office
Exhibition co-produced with Stroom Den Haag.
https://www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/tentoonstelling.php?t_id=8706903
Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede
11 September 2010 – 20 February 2011
The exhibition Abstract USA (1958-1968): In the Galleries presents a selection of artworks from the No Hero Foundation, a private collection of modern and contemporary art on a long-term loan to the Rijksmuseum Twente in Enschede. The exhibition will show abstract painting from the United States, made in the period 1958-1968, largely known as post-painterly abstraction or systemic painting.
Works by Norman Bluhm, Gene Davis, Friedl Dzubas, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Al Held, Alfred Jensen, Donald Judd, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons and Frank Stella.
Curator: Wouter Davidts
Assitant Curator: Jesse Van Winden (VAMA Research Master Student, VU University Amsterdam)
Design: Studio Berry Slok
Focus: Academic Publication(s):https://architectuurwedstrijd.knokke-heist.be/en/contest#application-for-participation
KNOKKE-HEIST LAUNCHES COMPETITION FOR CASINO RENOVATION
Knokke-Heist is the proud owner of its very own casino, built in 1929 and designed by the architect Léon Stynen. Thanks in part to the frescoes by René Magritte, this building is considered a true cultural monument. However, partly due to its outdated infrastructure, it is no longer able to provide or accommodate the desired all-round, high-quality experience. The municipal council of Knokke-Heist is therefore inviting national and international architectural firms to put themselves forward to give this site a complete overhaul.
This assignment requires a multifaceted approach, whereby any reconstruction or restoration should respect Stynen's original design. That being said, there is certainly sufficient scope for high-quality, contemporary architectural interventions. The casino's entire surroundings also form an integral part of the brief. The aim is to create a new beacon for the municipality, giving it a new dimension for the next hundred years while restoring the allure of yesteryear.
In 2020-21 I acted as scientific advisor for the institutional and architectural refurbishing of MuZEE, Ostend, leading up to the festive opening in June 2021 (Van Coo naar Kunst).
Focus: Societal value creationhttps://www.vlaamsbouwmeester.be/nl/instrumenten/open-oproep/projecten/oo3702-antwerpen-m-hka
Focus: Societal value creationThe Jan Vercruysse Foundation was established in October 2017.
The Jan Vercruysse foundation contains and preserves the archives, the library and the artistic legacy of Jan Vercruysse. The foundation encourages the study and wider understanding of Vercruysse’s life and work by increasing public access to and scholarship of his artwork and archives.
The Jan Vercruysse Foundation has donated the extensive archival files assembled by the artist since the early 1970s onward to the Ghent University Library, where they will be disclosed for consultation. The archives include visual and textual documents on the life and work of the artist such as unpublished writings, correspondence, photographs, drawings, exhibition files, technical files of his artworks, press files, publications, ephemera and the artist’s personal library.
The Jan Vercruysse Foundation is a private foundation.
https://architecture.uq.edu.au/research/architecture-theory-criticism-history/visiting-fellows
Focus: Academichttps://www.terraamericanart.org/fellows/wouter-davidts/
Focus: Academic Publication(s):Participation as an international external evaluator in a Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska- Curie programme, Call#2 of
the CHORAL programme.
Professor Wouter Davidts evaluated 9 applications for the following PhD research topic:
Cultural landscapes boosting disadvantaged mountain areas: a rural turn in arts-led vitalization
The CHORAL programme (Cultural Heritage Outreach in Romance Languages), coordinated by the Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Grant Agreement No. 101126643.
CHORAL aims to train high-level international researchers and promote interdisciplinary, international, and inter-
sectoral research addressing various aspects of Cultural Heritage.
https://www.festivaldelhistoiredelart.fr/edition-2023/
Nouvelles infrastructures pour l’art contemporain en Belgique
La Belgique a une histoire difficile avec les lieux et les bâtiments dédiés à l’art contemporain.
Le fait qu’encore aujourd’hui, il n’y ait pas un musée d’art contemporain dans la capitale du pays est signifiant. Le grand projet KANAL. Bruxelles promet d’am.liorer cette situation, mais ne change pas le fait que la collection fédérale du KMSKB reste dans les réserves.
Cette conf.rence sera le moment de faire une synthèse des projets qui sont en route (KANAL, BRUSK, etc.), mais aussi des projets qui n’ont jamais abouti.
Ecrire les histoires des institutions culturelles après 1945
Alors que de nombreuses institutions culturelles – et notamment les musées – s’occupent des questions m.morielles, la mémoire de leurs propres histoires est trop souvent maigre. En Belgique, le manque d’une historiographie systématique des institutions culturelles qui ont été fondées apr.s 1945 – dont la majorité est dédiée . l’art moderne et contemporain – est assez marquant. A partir du livre 'Diepdruk - vlakdruk - hoogdruk - doordruk: 50 jaar Frans Masereel Centrum' rédigé par le groupe de recherche KB45, cette conférence tentera de faire le bilan du travail qu’il reste à faire.
Focus: Academic