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Freek Wambacq

(c)Kristien Daem
Construction dans la sphère, 2012
Installation

'Construction dans la sphère' (2012) takes its title from that of the sculpture 'Construction dans la sphère (ocno 6)' made by Georges Vantongerloo in 1918. Here Freek Wambacq adds a new work to a series where he converts descriptions of existing art works into Braille. Framed behind glass, this translation in relief suggests that any attempt to describe a work inevitably results in different or new images. When, in Antwerp in 1959, the organizers of the exhibition The first abstract artists in Belgium included Vantongerloo in the list of participants without asking him beforehand, Vantongerloo flatly refused to lend his work, Construction dans la sphère. The decision was made easier given that Vantongerloo did not feel any genuine affinity with the other artists involved. With the Braille version of 'Construction dans la sphère', Freek Wambacq refers back to this event, and he wishes visitors to pause a moment before Vantongerloo’s ‘presence’ in the current exhibition, aptly titled ‘Must we teach the blind to see?’.