Over the Edges: The Streetcorners of Geent

S.M.A.K. and the historic town center, Geent
Through June 30

Jan Hoet, the director of S.M.A.K., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Gent, did not spend much time, as one would expect after a move, contemplating the walls of the museum’s new location, which opened in 1999 in Citadel Park.
He looks outside. "Extra muros".
An accomplice of artists including such as Beuys and Kabakov, he continues to reflect on the role of the museum, which must not separate art from real life. Just as for Cage music should be listened to with the windows open, so for Hoet art must be able to move freely in and out of the half-closed doors of the museum. In this way, the threshold becomes a boundary that pushes out beyond itself to bring the museum outside.
Almost as if in answer to Broodthear’s plate Museum (1969), the museum opens itself up to the city, and the city to contemporary art.
The brainchild of Hoet and co-curated by the Italian Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Over the Edges. De hoeken van Gent (The Hidden Places of Gent) represents a coherent progression, both theoretically and chronologically from Chambres d’Amis (1986). The museum, which at that time stretched out into private homes which were temporarily made public, now extends into the external, public space of Gent, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the town.
The concept of the streetcorner becomes a paradigm for the dividing line between city and institution, inside and outside, public and private, hidden and in full view, architecture and urban development. The concept of "passage" sought by contemporary sculpture finds its ideal home here on the streetcorners.
Crossroads. Landmarks. Places where you change your stride, slow down, or stop. Boundaries that break your field of vision and openings to something else.If the pretext for the exhibition is a historical one – the birth of Charles V in Gent in 1500, a key figure in an era of change towards modern times – what has instead been stressed is the radial development of time, the dynamic relationship and the metamorphosis that ties the past to the future. Just as Di Pietrantonio hopes, the Agnello Mistico ("Mystic Lamb", 1432) by the Van Eyck brothers can be the starting point for an idea of the universality of the values of culture and nature in the name of human society.
In accordance with S.M.A.K.’s diverse collection, which joins the local with the global, the 58 artists in this exhibition represent many different nationalities, both European and non. Right next to works by already acclaimed artists are the works of young emerging artists and those that are showing for the very first time (including the Italian artists Mario Airò, Simone Berti, Giuseppe Gabellone and vedovamazzei).
The artists work out their ideas about the streetcorners of this historic city, by creating a wide range of site-specific works: some of the works are monumental (perhaps too much), others are more modest, with only the slightest impact on the area". They purposely either blend into or interrupt the space; they engage us. Besides the turns in the road there are now also leaps of thought.
You get caught up in places within places.
You "run aground" in Olafur Eliasson’s oasis, Succession, which alludes to other spaces. Here you must slow down. At an intersection the green circle of grass invades the street corners, which become the cardinal points of a navigator’s compass.
At other intersections Huang Yong Ping’s turtles carry away a street sign in the middle of the bustling traffic.
As if by magic small hanging spheres or soap bubbles blowing in the wind appear and move across our line of vision. Created by Honoré d’O, they reflect the city, upside-down, between the two pedestrian walkways of Graslei and Koornlei, on either side of the canal.
Four silent figures harangue passers-by at the intersection of Belfortstraat and Hoogport, at the corners of the four buildings which mirror one another. Four bronze statues by Michelangelo Pistoletto, "cloned" but in different colors and dressed not in lace or in precious fabrics from Flanders but in rags, point to a corner of the building, as does a preexisting statue in a niche above them. These however are turned towards the wall, turned around onto this side of the corner and "brought down from the pulpit." They are anonymous passers-by looking at other passers-by out of the corners of their eyes.
While in church the music of Cage and Kagel is being played, chimneys come through the roof of the Conservatory – organ pipes by Haim Steinbach. The music continues through the streets with the sounds of plates being tossed out of a window, mixed with the voices of a loud argument inside the house (Patrick Lebret), and in the city with the shriek of an improbably Tarzan that tells the hour (Emilio López-Menchero).
Wandering around until nighttime, you see some people who are standing still in a square, waiting. Suddenly the streetlights flash: it is the signal. It is sent out, under Alberto Garutti’s instructions, from the maternity ward of the hospital, every time there is a birth in Gent.
On the other side of the square, attached to a corner store is the word "Pontiac." Charlene Teters takes off from there on an exploration of the Indian tribe of that name, but also the complicated and difficult history of Europe’s relationship with the Native Americans, cultural colonialism and reducing People to objects.
The intersection of Ottogragracht and Bibliotheekstraat is lit up by neon letters by Joseph Kosuth on the frieze of the former public library, which continue up to and around the corner. The letters bring out what is no longer inside the building, now empty and used as a warehouse, giving it back some dignity and a sense of its past, where words and language resided.
Speaking with people or going into the bars and restaurants, you feel a real enthusiasm that is in the air; everyone is touched by it, not only the young university students. The taxi drivers seem less bored than usual. Someone asks you if you have seen the seeing-eye dog by Toni Matelli or the metal spider web by Stefan Kern.

A passer-by points out the facade by Brian Tolle which reproduces the image of the old building reflected in water. The guy who rents out bicycles critiques the work by Jan Fabre and concludes that yes, in his opinion it is art, despite the banners protesting against it. People discuss. The city has been transformed and so have the people. The exhibition triggers reactions that are often different, as you would expect, but that attempt to go beyond another invisible limit that separates the interior and the exterior of the individual.




Lucia Prandi
Translation by Jacqueline Smith