BIELEFELD.- Prepare to have your perceptions subtly shifted. The Kunsthalle Bielefeld has opened its doors to "Tell Us Something No One Knows," the first comprehensive museum solo exhibition in Germany by acclaimed Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt (*1960). Featuring over 60 works, including powerful new site-specific installations, the exhibition embarks on a quiet yet profound dialogue with the very fabric of the Kunsthalle itself.
Dekyndt's art delves into the unseen forces that shape our world, from natural phenomena to societal pressures. What connects a blue ball seemingly floating through the gallery, a slowly dissolving textile curtain, or the echoing crack of a whipping lasso? For Dekyndt, these are all sensory invitations to experience the subtle, often ambivalent, energies driving our naturally unstable and geopolitically charged times.
The exhibition's intriguing title, drawn from John Ruskin’s 1866 book "The Ethics of the Dust," serves as an invitation to uncover hidden truths and unspoken mysteries. Dekyndt approaches these complex themes with a minimalist aesthetic, using diverse media—video, sculpture, installation, drawing, sound, and performance—to craft poetic reflections on universal change. She masterfully employs everyday materials like dust, liquids, salts, and textiles, allowing the quiet power of natural transformation to unfold within her pieces. Her explorations even extend to combining ancient fossilized wood with AI-calculated forms, manifesting hybrid objects that bridge nature, technology, and artistic speculation.
Visitors are immediately drawn into this contemplative journey. The exhibition begins with the striking performative work "Le cru et le cuit" (The Raw and the Cooked), where a figure in animalistic gestures chews and spits raw beetroot onto glass vitrines, starkly contrasting animal instinct with societal norms. Elsewhere, the rhythmic crack of a lasso, captured in a large-scale video projection, grazes a delicate silk-covered wall, creating a visceral tension between graceful artistry and uncontrollable force. While Dekyndt's work never directly addresses specific political events like the war in Ukraine, the fragility and tension inherent in every transformation are always palpably present.
Crucially, Dekyndt has developed a series of new works specifically for the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, engaging directly with its iconic architecture and history. She ingeniously uses water from the Lutter river, channeled beneath the museum, to initiate a transformative process within the space – a metaphor for change and transience confronting the museum’s role in preservation. Through subtle shifts in elements like curtains or carpets that echo the building's floor plan, she playfully destabilizes the museum experience. Her works, spanning both floors, enter a dialogue with selected pieces from the Kunsthalle’s own collection. This includes a powerful re-contextualization of Hans Schmitz-Wiedenbrück's "Woman with a Bundle of Brushwood" (1930s), a work by a regime-loyal Nazi artist, which had remained hidden for over 80 years. Dekyndt highlights its literal dust accumulation with a cone of light, allowing time, forgetting, and concealment to materialize, critically reflecting on socio-political developments.
At its core, Dekyndt's exhibition conveys a vital message: survival for both societies and nature hinges on constant change and adaptation. Her fascination with unpredictable processes is reflected in her choice of experimental, often ephemeral, materials. She invites us to approach the unpredictable with an open mind, transforming ordinary materials into profound meditations on societal and political questions, sparking both surprise and wonder.
"Tell Us Something No One Knows" promises a uniquely engaging and thought-provoking experience, inviting visitors to look closer, listen deeper, and reconsider the subtle forces that shape our existence.
