Edith Dekyndt: L’origine des choses

Closely linked to commercialisation and colonisation, the notion of the vitrine arose with industrialisation and the first world’s fairs. It was based on this fact and on the imposing, structural presence of the panoramic canvas in the Rotunda that Edith Dekyndt has constructed her project, which reveals her deep-seated interest in things using the concepts of still life, tableaux vivants, and active objects. The artist is interested in images “as a phenomenon of appearance and resurgence in motion”, as she describes it. Edith Dekyndt uses these subjects to comment on the appearance of the artwork and its status, ultimately to address an ambiguity, a suspension between two states: that of the object and that of the artwork, which she explores to its utmost limits.

The unfinished, is a key component of Edith Dekyndt’s work; her particularly open-ended creative process focuses on the notion of process and exploring ideas and experiences. Her study of movement and of the transformation of elements describes the ineffable degrees and variations in atmospheric colour, light, and perspective. For the vitrines at the Bourse de Commerce, Edith Dekyndt has composed loose arrangements of domestic objects (broken, fallen, collected, recovered, posed, covered, repaired, immersed, hung, suspended, floating, or otherwise) that recall the tradition  of the theatre of objects, among other things. These arrangements are interspersed with three videos that also address the “fascinating existence of things”.

These “scenes”, at once silent and alive, immobile and energetic, in which time is suspended, disconcert us in the same way that the artist was moved when she discovered Vermeer’s paintings in her twenties. This “molecular” painting adopts an almost organic approach to living things, and the extreme precision of the elements (light, texture, objects) has greatly nourished her artistic process. These works lead viewers to contemplate their enhanced ability to look directly at a unique physical and mental experience that encompasses the object per se and the place of its presentation.