Although the conceptual guidance is provided by experimental protocols, which she follows meticulously, Edith Dekyndt’s artistic approach results in a disturbing observation of the physical phenomena taking place before our very eyes, or even in certain cases, within our eyes.
In spite of inevitable references to the technological age and frequent recourse to recording devices (photography, video and sound), Edith Dekyndt’s deliberately low-tech oeuvre thus remains humanist, in the sense that it is less about the utopian invention of another world than a practical inventory of the wonders of our earthly world. Confirming the fact that artistic materials are not ideas but sensations, Edith Dekyndt manages to conceive our earthly environment by turning away from the supra-sensitive heights of philosophy or ideology, in favour of the even infra-sensitive or subterranean world of things which are hidden but paradoxically remain visible. For in spite of our technological arsenal, we still sometimes look without seeing ; or else because of it, we resemble the fool in the Chinese proverb who looks at the finger which is pointing to the moon.

Born 1960 in Ypres, Belgium, Edith Dekyndt lives and works in Tournai, Belgium. Her practice embraces video, drawing and sculpture. It is grounded in a meticulous observation of natural forces and physical phenomena, as they take place on a daily basis, but not always visually appear to us. Her experiments do not relate to any scientific analyses but are presented as figures of contemplation and reflection. This book is published on the occasion of the eponymous double exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon, between October 2015 and January 2016, and at Wiels, Brussels, from February 5 to April 24, 2016. These two exhibitions do not include any identical work, and their organisation follows different directions, thus denying the “free exchange” rule of the travelling exhibition often at work in artistic events.

This concertina fold, a cardboard book with pages you can unfold like an accordion, collects photographs of the vitrines of the exhibition The Origin of Things currently shown in Passage of the Bourse de Commerce. Texts written by Alexandra Bordes. In co-publishing with the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection. After Bertrand Lavier and Anri Sala, Edith Dekyndt has taken over the twenty-four display cases in the Passage of the Bourse de Commerce. It became one of the most popular set-ups used at the world’s fairs, and in fact, the ones we see in the Passage were installed when the building was reconfigured from an old market hall to a stock exchange on the occasion of the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. Dekyndt explored this history when she constructed this project around the idea of creating images that represent “an apparition and a resurgence in motion”. In this cycle of display cases, Edith Dekyndt both creates the conditions for the work to appear and questions how this comes about. The work is suspended between two natures (object and artwork) and two states (the readymade and the incomplete). The artist assembles and arranges these everyday objects or fragments of objects that have broken, fallen, been collected, recovered and repaired.

Edith Dekyndt (b. 1960) is a Belgian artist whose works offer sensory experiences based on the careful observation of the material and the cultural contexts that encompass it. Processual and conceptual in nature, his approach is interested in the objects, often ordinary, that make up everyday life and their transformation through contact with natural and architectural environments. His installations and performances integrate organic and machined objects, photographs, videos, sound and light, which occupies a central place in his work.
This work brings together a large body of work, corresponding to a new cycle in his work, from the major Wiels exhibition in Brussels in 2016 to the windows surrounding the Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.

Emma Lavigne, Leon Kruijswijk, Vinciane Despret, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Florence Meyssonnier