04—14.05.2023
EXIT - Doris Hardeman
Welcome to the exhibition ‘EXIT’ by Doris Hardeman, concluding her three months residency at Off the Grid. The opening is accompanied by an artist talk.
“She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.”
– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Somewhere between a warehouse and a wooden shack Lilibet Exi[s]ts. Space here is defined by a magnitude of [non]performativity. As the day grows old, it sheds its layers of meaning, bringing to light what normally remains sheltered in darkness.
Doris Hardeman (°1993, Rheden, NL) lives and works in Brussels. Through the media of sculpture, writing and installation, Doris’s conceptual and material research departs from the heterotopic space that balances on the borders of both the personal and the commercial structures of society. Through collecting, reproducing, and recontextualising objects, she attempts to create anecdotal yet poetic scenarios that latch onto social issues surrounding today’s industrial manufacturability. Within the creation of these scenarios, which are intertwined with mythical references and set in contemporary frameworks, Doris searches for a means to reflect on how objects can shape the way we relate to time and thereby frame the perception of our surroundings. Paying close attention to the broad versatility of materials in terms of craftsmanship and the mass production industries, her works play with the authenticity, utility, practicality and the original value of her chosen materials, amplifying connotations concerning the industrial manufacturability of our present time.
