Bram de Jonghe at 1646

Artist: Bram de Jonghe

Exhibition title: En dat ook

Venue: 1646, The Hague, The Netherlands

Date: May 19 – July 2, 2017

Photography: Jhoeko, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and 1646, The Hague

Two years after winning the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs Bram De Jonghe will show his most recent work in a solo exhibition at 1646. He will use the exhibition space itself as material: irregular edges, obstructions and architectural elements that normally are considered to be irritating for the ‘white cube’ experience, De Jonghe now uses as significant elements of the work. With this approach of the space the staircase will be wrapped and made into a gigantic pedestal, now as part of his construction and the frontspace will be transformed into a white, sterile spray booth to lift just a tip of the veil.

Movement of light and light source, real time and the narrated time transmuted into viewing, the denting of metal studs, expansion joints, white shrink-‐plastic, tar sculptures that use the space like a shoe, the release. These auto referential building blocks will again be the vehicle for daily concerns in the exhibition En dat ook by Bram De Jonghe at 1646. The sculptural language that the artist uses flirts with the temporary by confirming the permanent. The consolidation of heavy metal studs presupposes the presence of strong forces and suggests an action has taken place for a specific reason.

Ever since he moved to The Hague, we have kept an eye on the work of Bram De Jonghe, from his first room-‐filling installation at Billytown, to his more recent solo presentations at Stroom Den Haag and Art Rotterdam. Though one would expect his large architectural interventions to be the most conspicuous part of his work, they are often of such self-‐evidence that they’re easily overlooked. It is actually the smaller, subtler works, which are placed within these interventions, that manage to surprise at unexpected moments, from the corner of your eye. A machine that again and again tries to blow out a candle but never succeeds, a level magically floating in the air above a small shelf, a slightly bending fluorescent tube: they are small works, inspired by everyday subjects, which are preserved in their mysteriousness by the way they’re placed in the whole, as if you just caught them unattended.

The work of Bram De Jonghe arises in the tension between a formalistic and a practical attitude. By installing an obstruction in the exhibition space the viewer will look differently at these surroundings and the imaging grows in the redundant space of the thought. The image is added on the retina to the images that already exist in the mental space and by gathering several works in one specific space a synergy is created that each individual work on its own could not achieve.

Bram De Jonghe (1985, Oostende, BE) lives and works in The Hague. He obtained his BA and MA degree at the College for Science and Art of St. Lucas in Ghent. In 2015 he was the winner of the significant Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize. Recent solo exhibitions De Jonghe had at Netwerk in Aalst (BE), P/////akt in Amsterdam, TTTT (These things take time) in Ghent (BE), Stroom Den Haag and Billytown in The Hague.

Bram de Jonghe, En dat ook, 2017, installation view, 1646, The Hague