EDITH DEKYNDT

The work of Edith Dekyndt consists of installations, video art, drawings and photography. It often invokes a kind of dematerialisation. The material means needed for her work are modest, giving the physical phenomena the artist interrogates a strong sense of accessibility: even when the images or feelings generated seem to defy our senses, we immediately gain an insight into the way these senses are triggered. Physical processes such as freezing, melting and floating are investigated in a subjective way, demanding the same investigative rigour of the viewer. Trust in our own senses is therefore crucial. Her work does not resemble the work of a magician, neither does it contain any secrets. Even when her work is often inspired by anomalies associated with the process of seeing, its outcome is the result of a lucid vision of the world. Hands often play a crucial role in this, being the primary means of touching and sensing the world. Since 1999, the artist has called this way of working "Universal Research of Subjectivity", which since 2004 also has functioned as a foundation collecting projects that contain a recurring method, defined as "one that consists in enforcing relatively important means for random results, that are neither spectacular nor consumable." (www.universalresearchofsubjectivity.be). Science is used to reveal a reality that, even when easily comprehensible – her work hardly ever looks spectacular, and its aesthetics are minimal – challenges the limits of our perception. Reflecting those limits and revealing the intrinsic particularities of space, Dekyndt’s work invites the viewer to discover intrinsic particularities of space, and individually define them as such. In so doing, her work reflects on what the artist’s calls the "global positions of people". Her way of working moves beyond the question of identities, and therefore giving her work a political and human meaning on a both universal and highly individual level (our senses cannot be mixed up with those of others).