Koenraad Dedobbeleer
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Work from his oeuvre.
“Remodelling materials into vaguely recognizable forms that suggest functional objects, Dedobbeleer’s 13 sculptures refer primarily to each other: the rounded forms of a non-functional furnace in “Thought Apart From Concrete Realities” (all works 2010) mimic a bulbous replica of large, outdoor planters – abstracted, conjoined and multiplied three times in “The Gradual Formation of a Landscape”. Similarly replicated, a series of ineffectual doorknobs in various materials including painted foam and metal, were placed on the gallery’s floors and walls. They are all copies of a brass handle on the exterior of the gallery door. The wood of a hexahedronal piece resembling a fountain, “The Subject of Matter (for Vm)”, painted as faux-marble, mimics the actual marble surface of a neighbouring piece, “That Which Is”. Set into a niche carved into the bench-top of pink marble on that piece, in a depressed area perfectly-sized to contain it, a book titled “Already Uttered on Numerous Occasions in Various Places” contains images and exhibition documentation of possible sculptures that, save for one (the book’s introduction informs us) were never made or materialized beyond the trial phase. The one work that was realized, pictured on the paperback’s small cover – a branched and colourful length of wood suspended by cords entitled “Human Existence Resides in Utter Superfluity” – hangs low to the ground precisely where it was photographed. ” – Galerie Micheline Szwajcer