Gerard Herman
Willem Boel
Eva Vermeiren
Bert Huyghe
Kasper De Vos
Mathias Prenen
Jo Caimo
Buren
Lucie Renneboog
Frank&Robbert/Robbert&Frank
Dries Segers
Bert Jacobs
Elke Van Kerckvoorde
Dieter Durinck
Klaas Rommelaere
Roeland Van Trigt
Ingeborg Deglein
Marlies DC
Karina Beumer
Sibran Sampers
Eno Swinnen
Wim De Pauw
Neel De Bruycker
Rowan Van As
Oscar van der Put

On Ice (2016)
Co-curator: Leontien Allemeersch
With CAMPO
@ Kristalijn, Gent

All pictures taken by: Fien Cools

In 2016, Leontien Allemeersch and me curated something between a happening, a performance and a social occasion where people with all different cultural backgrounds met. There were the art people who came for the exhibition, the competitive ice skaters and the people who came there just for fun. With ON ICE, I wanted to create a different kind of white cube, existing of 3000 m2 of ice. Instead of having white walls, there were no walls at all. There was no electricity in the centre of the Ice, only on the sides. Factors like this challenged the artists and provoked interesting new approaches. For example, by lack of a white wall, a video artist decided to beam on the ice and use it as a ‘screen’.

By challenging 25 young artists to work with these very specific circumstances, we came up with other inventive solutions. Every artist received 10 hockey pucks, which they could use in whatever way they wanted. They could be used as a material, but also to make their work slide over the ice. I liked the idea that the exhibition could be in motion, and didn't have to be static.

Another productive restriction was the timeframe. The owner of the skating rink only wanted to give us time in between the usual programmation of the venue. This meant that we only had 30 minutes to build up the entire exhibition and that the duration of the exhibition would only last for four and a half hours. Because of the short build up time, I decided to make a performance out of it. The lights went out, there was smoke coming from a side door, and then the car that cleans the ice came out, followed by the 25 artists installing and putting the work on the ice rink. The audience watched this event from the cafeteria above. After the work was installed, we asked figure skaters to do a demonstration between the art works. In Belgium, figure skating is called ‘kunstschaatsen’, literally translating as “artskating’. After this, the ice rink was open to the audience, people could ice skate between the artworks, get warm waffles and glühwein. Besides the visual art, there were a couple of performances on the ice. The night ended with a DJ set and a small party took place on the ice, the people dancing on their skates.