The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

Ricardo Brey

(c)photo: Isabel Brey, Ghent - Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York © Ricardo Brey/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Coagulations, 2013-2014
Object , 23 x 33 x 33 cm (box closed), 25 x 75 x 75 cm (box opened)
metallic paint, paper, black sand, iron oxide, rope, chains, keys, locks, barons, two leporello books, two notebooks and folder with two drawings

"[...]Brey makes a compact with the very properties of the boxes, in the process erasing the distinction between the personal and the social, private and public, even inside and exterior. This is not to suggest that they somehow cancel each other out; to the contrary, they are elements of a dialectic that refuses to surrender to synthesis, so that things that could or should be opposite embrace their antitheses in gestures of uncritical co-presence."

(Welchman, J., Que le importa al Tigre una Raya Más: The Futility of Good Intentions, 2014, p.52.)

This work was made using iron oxide and sand from different deserts.