Guillaume Bijl

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Guillaume Bijl (born March 19, 1946 in Antwerp ) is a Belgian conceptual artist .

life and work

Bijl's father was a dock worker, his mother worked for a telephone company. In the 1960s, the autodidact turned to painting and took a liking to impressionism, expressionism, surrealism and abstract art. While studying economics, Bijl worked for a bank in Brussels for a while. After dropping out of his studies, his parents sent him to a vocational school in Antwerp. Bijl worked part-time in the art department of a bookstore in Antwerp for almost 10 years. In the late 1960s he studied at the Royal Institute for Theater, Cinema, and Sound (RITCS) at the Erasmusho School in Brussels, which he gave up after only one year to devote himself entirely to art. In total, Bijl was active as a painter for 14 years before his first installation was created in 1979.

Bijl's installations address pseudo-historical spaces and typical spaces of the leisure and consumer society. His work is a critical and ironic examination of cultural tourism. In the 1980s he installed scenes from offices, supermarkets, hospital corridors and fitness centers in art spaces.

In 2007, Bijl won the Sparda Art Prize NRW of the Art, Culture and Social Foundation of Sparda-Bank West in Wuppertal , after which his installation A New Successful Day was installed at the end of Herzogstraße in downtown Elberfeld the following year . The sculpture shows a man wearing a suit doing a handstand. The hanging tie and the adjacent suitcase were stolen from the object by vandals several times.

Since 2014, his Feestelijke beeldenreeks (festive picture series), consisting of six sculptures, has stood on Europaplatz in front of Amsterdam's RAI Exhibition and Congress Center . The group consists of six individual components and each shows two stilt walkers , illusionists with a floating maiden and oversized pageant figures with a bearer in front of them.

In April 2015, Bijl's work Archaeological Site (A Sorry Installation) from 2007, a fictitious, seemingly unreal excavation site of a half-exposed church tower in the middle of a deep, dug hole in Münster, was filled in after consultation with curator Kasper König , after responsibility for the object had been removed after the exhibition Sculpture.Projects was “in a state of suspension”.

In the Leopoldspark of the Belgian city of Ostend , Bijl's statue of a dog named Jack has been standing since 2018, who is surrounded by four other dogs, three of which are looking at the statue. The work is entitled Sorry . The installation is intended to commemorate the British sniffer dogs of the First World War.

From 2001 to 2011 Bijl was a professor of sculpture at the Art Academy in Münster . The artist lives in Antwerp.

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Guillaume Bijl  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John C Welchman, Clément Dirié, Koen Leemans, Cultuurcentrum Mechelen: Jumps of the cat. Guillaume Bijl's simulation therapy. JRP Ringier, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-03764-468-3 .
  2. ↑ a b Michael Brenson: A Conceptual Installation With Luxury for All . In: New York Times, December 21, 1990.
  3. ^ Bijl, Guillaume (born 1946), installation artist. In: Emmanuel Bénézit : Dictionary of Artists . ISBN 978-0-19977-378-7 , 2006.
  4. ↑ a b c Wuppertal receives a sculpture by Guillaume Bijl in 2008 . ( Memento from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: City of Wuppertal from December 10, 2007.
  5. ^ Anne Grages: The tie man has a new suitcase . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung of June 23, 2016
  6. ↑ Beeldenreeks at RAI van Quillaume Bijl. In: bewonersplatformzuidas.nl of June 3, 2014.
  7. ↑ Herhard H. Kock: Grass should grow over the church. Artist wants to have his work poured in. In: Westfälische Nachrichten of March 19, 2013.
  8. ↑ Herhard H. Kock: Guillaume Bijl's church tower is filled in. Artwork now underground. In: Westfälische Nachrichten of April 16, 2015.
  9. ^ City co-opt artwork van Beaufort. In: Het Nieuwsblad on 6 August 2018.
  10. ↑ Stand beeld eert 'Jack' in Eerste Wereldoorlog. In: Het Laatste Nieuws of March 13, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Bijl, Guillaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Antwerp