Present Perfect
Edith Dekyndt
April 3 – May 3, 2008
Any act of architecture is firstly an act of human intervention upon the natural world. Architecture, as such, is a form of inquiry; a system we construct for negotiating our relationship with nature. The space of this inquiry is one that Edith Dekyndt has been inhabiting throughout her career. Her practice (which often operates under the moniker, The Universal Research of Subjectivity) has of late turned towards examining natural phenomena as mediated by a careful, subjective gaze. As if to cast doubt on our assumptions of the laws that govern the cosmos, Dekyndt alienates these invisible forces – like gravity, magnetism and light – from their native epistemological context and opens them to questions within the framework of art. In fact, simply by making us aware of the constant presence of these forces, these unacknowledged conditions within which we conduct our existence, we become conscious of the subjective, circumstantial nature of our surroundings. What is unseen, unheard and unfelt is not all together absent – yet it is this absence, this spectral presence, that architects work to maintain within our built world. We almost never ask why buildings stay standing; we never question the loads and stresses that counter within their walls that keep them from crumbling.
By putting natural phenomena on display, visitors become agents in their own, subjective inquiry of the aesthetic world. Thus, Dekyndt’s Present Perfect becomes a laboratory for colliding the empirical with the intuitive.
Edith Dekyndt (1960) lives and works in Belgium. Recent group exhibitions include: Commitment curated by Luk Lambrecht (De Garage, Mechelen, BE, 2007), Welcome Back, Mister Paik!, (Mukha Media, Antwerpen, BE, 2006) Suite Fibonacci curated by Christopher Veys (Galerie Frederic Desimpel, Brussels, BE, 2006), Tracer, Retracer 2 curated by Nicole Gingras (Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal, CA, 2006), Sattelite of Love (Witte de With, Rotterdam, NL, 2006). Recent solo shows include: Two White Pieces curated by Neil Minuk (Arch 2 Gallery, University of Manitoba & Plug In Gallery, Winnipeg, CA, 2006), Slow Objects (Porte 11 Gallery, Brussels, BE, 2004).
Kindly supported by:
Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire - Bruxelles, BPS 22 Espace de Création Contemporaine - Charleroi, Secteur des Arts Plastiques Province - de Hainaut, Cera Foundation, Universal Research of Subjectivity asbl