During an artist residency in summer IKOB gives Adrien Tirtiaux (*1980, BE) a free hand to rethink the museum both in its form and content. The artist (nominated for the "Young Belgian Art Prize" in 2013) mostly takes into account the place in which he is immersed to build environments that grasp and change the relation we have to our surroundings. His installations, spatial interventions and performances take various shapes as they result from an in-depth analysis of the context in which they are located. His work emerges from the material that is available and has therefore the capacity to invert the perspectives, to reveal the status of sculptural riddle of any place.

Adrien Tirtiaux, who is a graduated architect and artist, decides to tackle a herculean challenge for his immersion in the ikob and its operating mode, taking up twelve audacious yet derisory works. These works constitute the exhibition’s narrative thread while they underline the inherently performative approach of the artist.

“Suggest the architecture and the operating mode of the museum; […] create a museum within the institution using the means and the attitude of an art centre. Dedicate the latter mainly as a field of experimentation, in opposition to the long-lasting character of the museum. For my first museum exhibition in Belgium I want the contrary of a retrospective: a site-specific project that responds to the particular context of the ikob.” - A. Tirtiaux, excerpt of the project.

Engaging itself body and soul, the ikob is simultaneously the object and the subject, the material and the matrix of the upcoming art work and transforms itself during the process of creation into a studio and into a production and exhibition platform. This singular exhibition thereby points at a specifically contemporary practice, which is that of extending the sculptural scope of a place – through specific spatial interventions – to its architectural and even sociocultural dimensions.

Tirtiaux, in line with Gordon Matta Clarck, deconstructs the immutable substance of the museum to turn it into a place of production, a place of experimentation and creation, a place that opens itself to the unknown and is both a work in gestation and in progress – the place par excellence of the contemporary and of a dialogue between art and architecture. With a series of significant interventions in the tissue of the place, his 12 works craft the museum to a work of art, revealing the particular status of its collection and of the ikob itself – between museum and art centre.