Guillaume Bijl (born 1946 in
Antwerp) is a
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
conceptual and
an installation artist. He lives and works in Antwerp.
Early life and education
Bijl was born in 1946 to a working-class family in Antwerp. The artist's father worked at the local docks and his mother worked for the Bell Telephone Company. A self-taught artist, Bijl came to art as an outsider initially making paintings during the 1960s. During this time, he mimicked numerous artistic movements such as
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
,
Expressionism,
Surrealism, abstract movements and more. During a period of self-guided studies in economics, Bijl worked at a bank in Brussels. Shortly thereafter his parents sent him to a local vocational trade school in the hopes of gaining professional skills. For nearly a decade, Bijl worked part-time in the art section of a bookstore in Antwerp. In the late 1960s, he studied theater and film at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema, and Sound in Brussels before dropping out after only a year. Bijl only then devoted himself to art-making full-time in his mid-30s.
Work
Bijl's early work, a series of projects on paper, combined his myriad background experiences and aimed to engage a wider audience citing a need to be nearer to the public. The series, ''Project-notities
roject Notes' (1969–1975), includes drawings and written proposals for museum installations, theatrical pieces, performance projects, and experiments in 16mm film.
In the late 1970s Bijl began creating ''Transformation Installations'', meticulous imitations of everyday realities inside the walls of galleries and museums.
Bijl's first installation was a driving school, set in a gallery in Antwerp in 1979, accompanied by a
manifesto calling for the abolition of art centres, and replacing them with 'socially useful institutions'. This installation was followed in the eighties by a billiards room, a casino, a laundromat, a centre for professional training, a psychiatric hospital, a
fallout shelter
A fallout shelter is an enclosed space specially designated to protect occupants from radioactive debris or fallout resulting from a nuclear explosion. Many such shelters were constructed as civil defense measures during the Cold War.
During ...
, a show of fictitious American artists, a conference for a new political party and a rural Belgian model house. A more recent show was at the Berlin’s Center for Opinions in Music and Art. Bijl has been reviewed by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''.
He divides his work into four categories: 'Transformation Installations', 'Situation Installations', 'Compositions Trouvées' and 'Sorrys'.
Solo exhibitions
Guillaume Bijl is represented by At the Gallery/modern and contemporary art (Antwerp), Galerie Nagel Draxler (Cologne/Berlin), Guy Pieters Gallery (Knokke-Heist, Belgium) and André Simoens Gallery (Knokke, Belgium). Below is a selection of Solo exhibitions:
* 2012: Cultuurcentrum Mechelen
* 2012: Etablisssement d’en face, Brussels
* 2011:
Arnolfini
Arnolfini is an international arts centre and gallery in Bristol, England. It has a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a ...
* 2008:
SMAK
Smak ( sr-Cyrl, Смак; trans. ''The end time'') was a Serbian and Yugoslav band from Kragujevac. The group reached the peak of popularity in the 1970s when it was one of the most notable acts of the former Yugoslav rock scene. The band's l ...
* 2001: Städtische galerie Nordhorn
* 1998:
Kunsthalle Reklinghausen
* 1998:
Neue Galerie Graz
* 1997:
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex.
Founded in 1964, it is ...
* 1996:
Kunstverein Hannover
* 1996:
Muhka
* 1994:
Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum
Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum (Dutch ''Beeldentuin Middelheim Museum'') is a sculpture park of 30 acres in the park part of the Middelheim Nachtegalen Park at Antwerp. The Middelheim Museum collection has approximately 400 works of art on di ...
* 1993:
Wiener Secession
The Vienna Secession (german: Wiener Secession; also known as ''the Union of Austrian Artists'', or ''Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs'') is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austri ...
* 1990:
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Kunstinstituut Melly is a contemporary art gallery located in a former school building on Witte de Withstraat, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It was founded in 1990 and originally named after the street it was located on. It presents curated exhi ...
* 1989:
New Museum
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
History
The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sch ...
* 1989:
Le Magasin
Founded in 1986, Le Magasin - Centre National d'Art Contemporain is housed in an industrial hall, built for the 1900 Paris World's Fair by the workshops of Gustave Eiffel. Manufacturers Bouchayer and Viallet, working in the area of hydroelectric ...
* 1988:
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
, Belgium Pavilion
* 1988:
Kunstverein Kassel
* 1986:
Kunstverein Keulen
* 1985:
Stedelijk Museum
* 1984:
SMAK
Smak ( sr-Cyrl, Смак; trans. ''The end time'') was a Serbian and Yugoslav band from Kragujevac. The group reached the peak of popularity in the 1970s when it was one of the most notable acts of the former Yugoslav rock scene. The band's l ...
* 1984:
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...
* 1979: Galerij Z, Antwerp
Group exhibitions
Guillaume Bijl's work has been featured in significant groupshows and biennials, including the
Documenta IX (1992),
Skulptur Projekte Münster
Skulptur Projekte Münster (English: Sculpture Projects Münster) is an exhibition of sculptures in public places in the town of Münster (Germany). Held every ten years since 1977, the exhibition shows works of invited international artists for ...
(2007),
Busan Biennale (2006),
Scape Biennale (2008),
Lyon Biennale (2011),
Istanbul Biennale
The Istanbul Biennial is a contemporary art exhibition that has been held biennially in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1987. The Biennial has been organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) since its inception. Format
Istanbul Bien ...
(2013) and
MANIFESTA
Manifesta, also known as the European Nomadic Biennial, is a European pan-regional contemporary cultural biennale.
History
Manifesta was founded in 1994 by Dutch art historian Hedwig Fijen. The first edition took place in Rotterdam. One of t ...
11 (2016).
Public collections
Bijl's piece titled ''Behandlingen'' (1975–1979) resides in the collection at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp. The artist has work collected at
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
and
Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne in Paris, the
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Ghent,
MUMOK in Vienna, the Goldberg Collection in New York, and more.
References
External links
Guillaume Bijl Official WebsiteM HKAthe-artist.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bijl, Guillaume
Living people
Artists from Antwerp
Belgian contemporary artists
Postmodern artists
Belgian installation artists
1946 births