Maarten Vanden Eynde

Balancing concept, matter and activism the exhibition showcases seven artistic positions including and engaging with waste. It may be argued that waste embodies both a material continuity as well as a temporal discontinuity. Thus it exposes us to a world of matter on the one hand. On the other hand it seems to animate a time passed, passing and to come. It is evidence of life, disclosing our humanity and inviting narrative engagement. At the same time it is somehow anti-human and untimely, betraying a more intrinsic relationship with matter and life. (from: William Viney, Waste; A Philosophy of Things (Bloomsbury: 2014))  Instrumentalizing the conceptual challenges embodied in waste, the artists in What is Waste? make waste a matter open to innovative recoding or renanimation. The title of the exhibition references the signature piece of the collage trouvé series of herman de vries: untitled (what is rubbish?) from 1956.

Plastic Planet 2015-webMaarten Vanden Eynde, Continental Drift III (2015)