What happens to the animals in a zoo if it closes down? That was the question the artist Filip Van Dingenen wondered about when the Zwartberg Zoo in Genk closed for good in the late 1990s. His researches took him to zoos all over the world as he set out to chart the animals’ new homes. The results of his investigations were presented in a book and a website, both entitled Zoonation. Research and inventories are at the heart of Van Dingenen’s artistic practice. When Komplot, the arts centre across the road from Wiels, invited him to exhibit his work, he showed a collection of beer glasses and beermats conserved by a lady hairdresser neighbour of Wielemans-Ceuppens, the former brewery where Wiels is now based. Van Dingenen’s current exhibition at Galerie Waldburger is the result of a residency project in the Canadian Rockies. While he was there he developed an interest in snowshoes, as used, for example, by the explorers from the Hudson’s Bay Company when they reached the Rocky Mountains. He combed through books on the subject in the local library. He marked the books in question with a stencil – not so much an act of vandalism as a footprint, comparable to the way in which explorers on an expedition leave a trail by planting flags. The books in question are still to be found in the library. At Galerie Waldburger the artist is exhibiting an index of the books he consulted and which he marked with his stencil. But Van Dingenen is no armchair anthropologist; he is willing to roll up his sleeves himself. When he saw an old snowshoe in a museum, he covered it in plaster in order to make a copy of it. He makes a playful reference to that by drawing a pair of snowshoes in chalk on a blackened wall in the gallery. The show is rounded off with a slide projection of his research material. Van Dingenen deliberately avoids fetishising the work of art. Neither the snowshoes nor the books he worked on are included in the exhibition. Which may leave the visitor feeling a little short-changed – but it does, on the other hand, stimulate the imagination.
Filip Van Dingenen: Banff Flux Snowshoe Travels > 29/6, do/je/Th > vr/ve/Fr 14 > 19.00, za/sa/Sa 12 > 17.00, gratis/gratuit/free, Galerie Waldburger, chaussée de Waterloosesteenweg 4, Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, 0498-49.50.86, www.galeriewaldburger.com
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