Installation view, The Ghost Year, 2020
Edith Dekyndt
The Ghost Year
October 30 ⎼ March 27, 2021
The Ghost Year is conceived like a diary or an index of the recent past, this exhibition brings together pieces that the artist made during the first months of 2020. Intimate objects and items brought back from an erratic trip to the Baltic Coast are combined with glass structures from the installation Visitation Zone originally devised for the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Slow Object 017
Edith Dekyndt
2020


silver leaves on cotton 143 x 110 cm Ref. 4139
Burned Piece (dark green velvet from Spain)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


dark green velvet, Indian ink 173 x 128 x 6 cm Ref. 4150
Burned Piece (dark red velvet from Spain)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


dark red velvet, Indian ink 171 x 128,3 x 6 cm Ref. 4152
Installation view, The Ghost Year, 2020
Burned Piece (light blue velvet from Belgium)
Edith Dekyndt
2020
light blue velvet, Indian ink 134 x 185 cm Ref. 4156
Working across video, sculpture, installation, sound and drawing, Edith Dekyndt addresses timeless concerns of time and space. Using a wide range of techniques she makes visible transient physical phenomenon and ephemeral incidents to create a conceptually rich and materially engaged visual language. In praise of what is not clean or pure, her work operates like a translation of time into material and vice versa, a study of the subtle variations in the fabric of our tangible world.
MM02 (S)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4169
MM03 (S)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4170
MM11 (Summer)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4178
Installation view, The Ghost Year, 2020
MM23 (Summer)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 30 x 24 cm Ref. 4189
MM31 (Spring)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 40 x 30 cm Ref. 4197
MM32 (Spring)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 40 x 30 cm Ref. 4198
MM41 (Winter)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 40 x 30 cm Ref. 4207
In Visitation Zone, Dekyndt used empty vivariums and aquariums from the Riga Zoo, and a woman performed a kind of ritual by filling these glass vitrines with small amounts of preserved fruits and vegetables pickled with the traditional Baltic food preservation method. The performer was tasked with moving the precious food items from one vitrine to another in a continuous manner. From the Zoo to the Biennal, these glass vitrines have now made their way into this diaristic exhibition. Emptied, they bare traces of the food they contained, dirt from the industrial site they were displayed in for the Biennal, and marks left by the animals that used to occupy them. Through the simple gesture of re-presenting it, this work exists like an index of itself. Concurrently, the transparent surfaces of its glass structures are themselves the site of a more tangible kind of indexicality — the accumulation of stains, dust, grime, scratches and cracks.
Edith Dekyndt, Visitation Zone – detail, 2020
Visitation Zone
Edith Dekyndt
2020


aquariums, fluorescent tubes, video, videoscreen Different dimensions, video 2’06” loops Ref. 4214
MM01 (S)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4168
MM04 (S)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4171
MM16 (S)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 30 x 24 cm Ref. 4183
MM09 (Summer)
Edith Dekyndt
2020


sugar, fabric, wood 24 x 18 cm Ref. 4176
Throughout her work, Edith Dekyndt explores the relationship between time, location, material and affect. For the artist, The Ghost Year constitutes a place to halt and pause, a station in the ongoing process of mourning. Short cellphone videos, domestic fabric soaked in Black Chinese Ink or lingerie tissue coated with sugar are just some of the means by which she registers the transformative processes that make up the objects of life and the life of objects.
Eternal winter there
Edith Dekyndt
2020
object on inox stainless steel shelf 80 x 13 x 3,3 cm Ref. 4211
Edith Dekyndt, The Ghost Year – Still, 2020