Sam Lewitt at Z33 – Art Viewer

Artist: Sam Lewitt

Exhibition title: CURE (the Work)

Curated by: Tim Roerig

Venue: Z33, Hasselt, Belgium

Date: October 4, 2020 – January 30, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Z33, Hasselt

The American artist Sam Lewitt investigates the circulation of matter and capital in the global economy. His exhibition CURE (the Work) at Z33 departs from the recent closure and demolition of Ford Genk, formerly a major employer in the region.

As Ford Genk was undergoing demolition, the new wing of Z33 was under construction in the nearby city of Hasselt. Lewitt retools this economic transition in his exhibition. He uses elements of the demolished factory, as well as soil from the Ford site, to set up a production line for compressed earth blocks, a low-cost building material. Inside the galleries, the stages of the production process—compressing, curing, and stacking—are separated by doors and tarps from the former factory. This dispersed presentation raises the question of where we locate the “work,” as an activity and as a product.

In the galleries of Z33, two earth ramming machines compress soil from the Ford site into interlocking earth blocks. These manual devices were originally designed for self-help housing in so-called developing countries and also embraced by practitioners of small-scale ecological self-sufficiency. They enable the direct use of local soil for shelter and road construction. The earth ramming machines connect Z33 to various other production sites and raise the question of how artistic production is tied to a specific place: the machines are meant to be used with local soil, but can be used anywhere in the world. In this respect, Lewitt’s work differs from site-specific art that is made for one place. The Ford site in Genk—which is being redeveloped as a logistics hub—is already connected to numerous other places of economic activity. Lewitt uses this site as raw material to be transformed throughout the exhibition.

Sam Lewitt was born in Los Angeles in 1981. He lives and works in New York, where he completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2005 after receiving his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2004. His recent exhibitions include the BMW Open Work commission at the Frieze Art Fair in London (2018) and the Venice Biennale (2017). Lewitt’s solo exhibition More Heat Than Light traveled from the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco (2015) to the Kunsthalle Basel (2016), and finally, under the title Less Light Warm Words, to the Swiss Institute in New York (2016). His work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MoMA, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, among others.

Sam Lewitt, CURE (the Work), 2020. Installation view at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Selma Gurbuz