Middle Gate

    NLEN

    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".

    Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK

    Back
    (c)image: AMVK
    Rorty the Headroom, 2002
    Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK
    Other , 240 x 150 cm
    Computerprint on 3M on plexi with magnetic back

    "A computer-print for Richard Rorty on Plexiglass.  Rorty is one of my 18 "Philosophical Rooms". Charles Baudelaire shouts the 2nd half of the 19th century: "Le Satanisme a gagné!” and opens dead-tired the gates for Modernism as we know it. Simultaneously in North America Pragmatism is born, a materialistic philosophy of the New World of which Richard Rorty will become, in 1979, the most extreme beholder. The interior is occupied by Telstar, the first communication satellite, and me sitting in 1979 in a bedroom of the Chelsea hotel in New York.

    Each "Philosophical Room" is a computer-interpretation of an existing interior of which I redefine the visual aspect, according to the mental impact of the philosopher. The name as a word becomes a presence in the room. My first philosophical room dates from 1998: Descartes. Than came Spinoza and Leibniz. Each space is given its outlook under the influence of the philosopher’s theory. It is me, the avatar,  greeting the specific theory, in an interior suited for the circumstance. I take the freedom to relate each philosopher very precisely with my personal evolution as a thinker." 

    − AMVK

    Back