Koenraad Dedobbeleer

The works of Koenraad Dedobbeleer are composed of objects and shapes that seem to step out of our everyday environment: out of the apparent irrelevance of the ordinary and the shadow of the exceptional. Ranging from small-scale sculptures to extensive installations, his materially rich assemblages broach the connections and separations between lead roles and supporting ones, figures and structures, artworks and display systems. Through referencing—even appropriating—designs, architectures, and histories of art, Dedobbeleer’s work locates itself at a particular point within the expanded field of sculpture, where codes and standards of presenting art and the valuations implied therein are continuously being challenged.

Access-based Models Financed by Private Subscription (2025) and A Targeted Message from Another Ontology (2025) are paradigmatic of his bridge-building artistic practice. As with many of his works—which are often named after fragments from literature, music, or other sources—the titles add a personal dimension to their objecthood, a poetic notion to their consistency, a sober tone to their playfulness. Combining common Mason jars and light bulbs with other found materials, the two works expressly address value creation and hierarchization. Seemingly distinct from design’s occupation with optimizing functionality, solving problems, and seeking answers, art’s (asserted) mandate is to provoke thought and pose questions. Dedobbeleer renegotiates these strict categorizations and, with them, the question of any object’s purpose and meaning. The sculptures are table lamps as much as pieces of art, but also more than either, and remain independent of their presentation within a specific context—namely the art institution whose power and problems his works also tend to comment on.

– Clara Maria Blasius