Out of this World

The Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens is pleased to announce the opening of Out of This World —a line-up of three solo presentations comprising a comprehensive exhibition of works by the late German artist Blinky Palermo (1943–1977), a sculptural installation by American artist Robert Grosvenor (°1937), and an intervention by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (°1958). Each of the three presentations offers its own account of how everyday gestures, things, and sights become poetic statements, simultaneously blurring and reinforcing the distinction between art and non-art, art and social reality, popular culture, mass communication, etc.

Curated by Ory Dessau, the current line-up of presentations begins with and evolves from Blinky Palermo’s exhibition. A leading model figure of the European scene of the 1960s–1970s, Palermo’s work suggests a unique and inexhaustible equation informed by the aesthetic of geometric abstraction and the conceptual consequences following the invention of the ready-made. Palermo examines the artistic act from the inside — as an idiosyncratic cosmology determined and regulated by the artist — as well as from the outside — reflecting on the status of the creative outcome as an object in the world. Known for his exploration of the specific architectural givens of the physical exhibition site, in his practice Palermo raises the question with regard to the place of art, localizing it each time anew based on the actual gallery space, its concrete conditions of light, and the individual perception of the viewer therein. In this sense, Palermo’s exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens incorporates its setting into the displayed works, which unfold in space within a score-like arrangement encapsulating the different parts of his oeuvre, from wall paintings to cotton paintings and works on paper.

The title Out of This World attempts to capture Palermo’s strategy of combining modified ready-made elements “from the world” while elevating them towards the “out-worldly” domain of abstract art.