There is an empty plinth or “sokkel” in Antwerp’s Central Park. Since 2011, the Klein Antwerp community association and the Middelheim Museum have added a cultural dimension to the park by inviting an (inter)national artist twice a year to share his or her topical interpretation of this empty plinth.
For over thirty years now, the artist Guillaume Bijl (b. 1946) has transformed museums and art galleries into functional spaces or “three-dimensional still-lifes” such as a Driving School (1979), an Atomic Bomb Shelter (1985), a Supermarket (1990), a Museum of Voting Booths (2000) and a Mattress Discounter (2003). Generally speaking, he does not attempt to reconstruct an example down to the last detail. Instead he wants to create a stereotype. Bijl’s artistic interpretation, however, is so realistic that the spectator no longer knows whether this is fiction or reality. This causes an instant of “alienation”. It exposes our leisure time and consumer society as an empty “set culture”, for decorative purposes. In this “sorry installation”, which he developed for De Sokkel in the park, he isolates a part of reality, creating a poetic assemblage which disorients the spectator.
Location
Antwerp central park: on the side of Quinten Matsyslei, near the play area and the skate park.
Previous exhibitions
- Henk Visch
- Ria Pacquée
- Cristian Bors & Marius Ritiu
- André Romão
- Ilaria Lupo
- Folkert de Jong
- Jef Geys
- Nicholas J. Hoffman
De Sokkel (The Plinth) is a co-production of the Klein Antwerpen neighbourhood association and the Middelheim Museum. With the support of the District of Antwerp.