M HKA Ensembles

Installation, variable dimensions.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7271_M233).

This installation was originally conceived for the FRAC Champagne-Ardennes in Reims (France) and takes its inspiration from a trip that Honoré δ’O made to Nepal, organised by the KIASMA, the museum for contemporary art in Helsinki, together with five other artists. In 2002 MuHKA acquired a part of the installation. It was introduced to the public on the top floor of the museum and simultaneously documented by the artist. It was a presentation/documentation project: while the work was being installed, the artist described and analyzed it, with a view to future presentations and the preservation of the art work. The spatial installation consists of approximately one hundred small sculptures, videos and assemblies. Simple objects such as plaster works, stones and gnomes together form complex compositions within the work. The work has no beginning and no endpoint and can be explored from each detail. As a viewer you become entirely involved as you become a part of the work. You are encouraged to extend the details in your mind and to work out new compositions. Many of the details or compositions inspire stories. The work is filled, for example, with materials and shapes that refer to illness and recovery: the fan with the vacuum cleaner bags refers to the breathing difficulties the artist experienced while climbing the Himalaya, but also to the environmental problems in Nepal. Also in the videos, his own physical restraints are linked to the ecological disasters in the Himalaya region. Depending on the connections you make as a viewer, you will discover aesthetic, formal, functional, political or personal meanings that are liable to change continuously.