Koenraad DedobbeleerBoredom Won't Starve as Long as I Feed ItMies Van Der Rohe Stipend 2009–Haus Esters
Opening: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 11.30 a.m.
Familiar forms of crossing table legs, drain pipes, and a plastic red drinking cup confront the visitor in Boredom Won't Starve as Long as I Feed It, the exhibition of artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer in Museum Haus Esters. These vaguely familiar structures and silhouettes, encountered frequently yet unobtrusively in daily life, take stage as Dedobbeleer manipulates them in unfamiliar ways. Forms rooted in everyday design are here appropriated, displaced, and re-fashioned into sculpturally and spatially oriented works. The drain pipes evolve into a sculpture fixed on the ceiling; the standard plastic cup transforms into a nickel object impossibly balanced on the floor. Taking his cue from Mies van der Rohe, Dedobbeleer presents a network of objects that inform each another and their surrounding space.
As the 2009 recipient of the Mies van der Rohe Stipend, Koenraad Dedobbeleer (*1975, Halle, Belgium) combines new site-specific works and realizes extant works anew. His presentation of art in the historically loaded space investigates the nature of displaying art. Directly engaged with Mies van der Rohe's and Lilly Reich's interior design, Dedobbeleer paints the original system for hanging paintings. In a light, matte gray the rods now course through the rooms like shadows. The shift in color acknowledges yet transforms the system's original function. Rather than a means to hang art, the system is situated as art itself.
Further enmeshed in the space, Dedobbeleer fashions a new wall, Retain a Sense of Proportion, which obstructs sight lines and interrupts the flow of traffic. Unexpectedly placing a wall, void of any supportive function, he rearranges the physical space and examines the perception of culturally familiar objects. Dedobbeleer underscores that depending upon context and surroundings, the wall-like form might serve as a support, as a “road-block,” as a boundary, as a backdrop for art, or as art itself.
Boredom Won't Starve as Long as I Feed It offers the visitor the possibility to discover multiple meanings and unending intellectual connections. Dedobbeleer visually and conceptually layers his artwork in both motif and in medium. Ranging from the monumental to the miniscule and from the direct to the enigmatic, Dedobbeleer's sculptures, architectural details, and photographs investigate the relationship between form, perception, and memory. Through visual echoes found in his intricate constellation of objects, the artist probes into the nature of recognition and realization.
Extending the artwork out into the garden, Koenraad Dedobbeleer creates a de-centered and non-restrictive environment for art in Mies van der Rohe's space. At once playful and introspective, challenging and direct, Dedobbeleer's reduced sculptural forms present anything but a reductive line of thinking.
The Mies van der Rohe Stipend was established in 1979 to promote young, promising artists and provide them a forum for international recognition in the renowned Museums Haus Lange and Haus Esters. After a gap of thirteen years the stipend and its accompanying exhibition were granted to Koenraad Dedobbeleer. A stipend of 5,000 euros will be awarded to an artist every two years.
A catalogue to accompany Koenraad Dedobbeleer's exhibition is forthcoming.
