Bram Vanderbeke | 26.05.2022 - 02.09.2022
Bram Vanderbeke is a Ghent-based, Belgian artist/designer. He graduated from the Design Academy, Eindhoven in 2016, complementing a prior training in Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent. His practice is diverse but consistent and stands out for its material, sculptural and monumental qualities.
Bram explores and transforms the possible interactions between an object, its architectural environment and its
user, further challenged by raw materiality, form and functionality. His works are in the same time autonomous artistic manifestations and utile solutions, an ambiguity Bram deliberately aims for. He creates his Architectural Objects and rhythmic installations in varying dimensions, both in private and in public contexts. The works often influence the spatial perception of the environment they become part of, sometimes by extending an existing
space through creating a new space within it.
Bram Vanderbeke is one of the founding members of BRUT, a collective of emerging Belgian designers. He also collaborates with Dutch Invertuals (NL) and Core Studio (NL), Tools Gallery (FR) and Nilufar Gallery (IT).
Bram Vanderbeke creates Architectural Objects: monumental designs with a distinctive materiality and aesthetic. In doing so, Bram suggests considering the status of these works as intermediate. Not so much to declare them unfinished, but rather as an accentuation of their intrinsic potential – their capacity to vary and alter, according to the circumstances they may once become part of. The works introduce an interaction between space and object and between architecture and function.
Stacking is a vital word in relation to these Architectural Objects. Since it is this stacking – the deliberate and, above all, physical act of placing something on top of another – which is the foundation of many of them. When looked at from a distance, the Architectural Objects generously emphasise their context, revive its identity and introduce a new rhythm. Once in closer view, the objects also reveal their other qualities. On the one hand, this is the moment when the objects unveil their function and when an observer becomes a user.
On the other hand, it is the point where materiality takes over, led by the textures and shades of the surfaces, the rawness and solidity of form and substance. They echo a process which is both experimental and intentional, bodily and mental.
After the finissage weekend on June 25th & 26th, the ‘Pragmatic Sculptures’ stay at the gallery so people renting the duplex as a holiday home, can still enjoy, and literally live, among Bram Vanderbeke’s unique artworks.
