Edith Dekyndt - AgnosiaExhibitionWitte de With, Center for Contemporary ArtRotterdam, 28 Feb – 26 Apr 2009

PRESS RELEASE– Rotterdam, February 2009

Opening Friday, 27 February, 5 p.m.

Witte de With presents Agnosia, a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt (b. 1960, Ypres, Belgium) The exhibition includes adaptations of previous works as well as recent productions.

For over two decades, Edith Dekyndt has created a large repertoire of single channel video projections, slide projections, sculptures and sound works, all of which are characterized by a sparse but playful aesthetic. Her video works counterpoise the methodical explorations of experimental video with a skeptical and deliberately erratic approach to minimalism. Often flirting with the limitations of recording technology, she produces seemingly simple, evocative images that, in Dekyndt’s words, “are neither spectacular nor consumable,” and which set out to loosen the relationship between subjectivity and the world of facts.

Since 1999, Dekyndt’s installations have been produced under the umbrella of a Universal Research of Subjectivity, a consciously humorous phrase that functions both as an association – established in 2004 – and as a generative pseudonym that provides a speculative framework for her videos, sculptures and installations. This association/pseudonym establishes a focus on the division between microcosm and macrocosm, a fictional yet naturalized division that destines subjectivity to remain caught at the intersection of these two separated worlds.

A total of twelve installations will be on show at Witte de With, including video, sculpture, and sound pieces, as well as slide projections and one set of photographic images. The works will range from wraithlike sculptural works like Ground Control (2008), a black helium balloon that moves around slowly and freely in one of the gallery spaces, to video works like Dream Machine (2006), in which the three primary colors alternate frame by frame at 24 frames per second, producing a jarring, disorienting effect on the viewer.

Dekyndt’s video-installation One Second of Silence (2008), which will be presented at Witte de With, enables a more directly political reading of Dekyndt’s work. Yet, it is not about a politics of identity; rather it is focussed on identifying a space of subjectivity not immediately captured by organized political content - “global positions of people,” as the artist states, and a “focus on the occupation of space, by experiencing the meanings, contents, and particularities of the space (in) itself, as well as its socio-cultural and human context.”

Curated by:Juan A. Gaitan, Nicolaus Schafhausen

Publication: Witte de With will publish a Source Book on Dekyndt’s work, edited by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Juan A. Gaitan and Monika Szewczyk.

Events

Friday 27 Feb5 p.m., Opening7 p.m., A conversation between Edith Dekyndt and Denis Gielen (director of publications and curator at the Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand Hornu, Brussels) . Language: English.

Biography Edith Dekyndt

Edith Dekyndt (b. 1960 in Ypres, Belgium) lives and works in Tournai, Belgium.

She has been included in a number of exhibitions worldwide: La trahison des images ©, Pallazzo Franchetti, Venice Biennale 2001, The Weather, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver 2004, Brussels South Airport, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna 2005, One Second of Silence, Parker’s Box Gallery, New York 2008, Present Perfect, Program Gallery, Berlin 2008, Political/ Minimal, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2008, Show Me, Don’t Tell Me, Brussels Biennale 2008, Nos (Us), Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro 2009, Upcoming solo exhibition: The Transparent Ceiling, Galerie Les filles du Calvaire, Parijs, 20 March till 20 April 2009. A forthcoming monograph, I Rememeber Earth edited by Denis Gielen, will be published by Facteur Humain in March 2009.