30/8/2014
Carte blanche to Adrien Tirtiaux
IKOB, Eupen
His 12 works craft the museum to a work of art, revealing the particular status of its collection
During an artist residency in summer the ikob gives Adrien Tirtiaux a free hand to rethink the museum both in its form and content. The artist (nominated for the Young Belgian Art Prize in 2013) most of the time takes into account the place in which he is immersed to build environments that grasp and change the relation we have to our surroundings. His installations, spatial interventions and performances take various shapes as they result from an in-depth analysis of the context in which they are located. His work emerges from the material that is available and has therefore the capacity to invert the perspectives, to reveal the status of sculptural riddle of any place. Adrien Tirtiaux, who is a graduated architect and artist, decides to tackle a herculean challenge for his immersion in the ikob and its operating mode, taking up twelve audacious yet derisory works. In line with Gordon Matta Clarck, he deconstructs the immutable substance of the museum to turn it into a place of production, a place of experimentation and creation, a place that opens itself to the unknown and is both a work in gestation and in progress - the place par excellence of the contemporary and of a dialogue between art and architecture. With a series of significant interventions in the tissue of the place, his 12 works craft the museum to a work of art, revealing the particular status of its collection and of the ikob itself - between museum and art centre.