Guillaume Bijl: Multiples & Editions

Guillaume Bijl: Multiples & Editions, co-published with Walther Koening, shows the obscure yet fundamentally intriguing transformative installations by the Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl (°1946), who surprised the international art world of the early 1980s. Galleries, art spaces and museums were radically transformed into ordinary looking commercial or entertainment venues like carpet stores, supermarkets or TV-Quiz decors. Apart from these, Bijl presents slices of dead pan reality as ‘situation-installations’ and ‘compositions trouvées’. Lesser known, but widely distributed are the multiples Bijl created in the context of an installation or an exhibition. These objects seem extremely banal or kitschy but acquire a different meaning when seen as part of Bijl’s artistic strategy of staging and appropriation. Together with the posters and books Bijl designed, all of Bijl’s multiples are collected for the first time in this catalogue raisonné. Text in English and Dutch.