Peter Buggenhout
12 March–31 May 2015
Opening: Wednesday 11 March, 8–11pm
M – Museum Leuven
L. Vanderkelenstraat 28
B–3000 Leuven
Belgium
www.mleuven.be
“I am ambitious and greedy; I want to encompass the whole world with my work. Not to cover one or two facets, but everything. I actually try to take everything around me—from the leaves on the trees in the garden around my studio to the monumental cranes in Ghent harbor nearby—and squeeze it into my work somehow, to produce the same wealth of impressions, feelings and possible reflections you have when you walk around somewhere, musing or lounging on the couch at home. I try to fit all those impressions that are possible simultaneously into my work.”
–Peter Buggenhout
In Peter Buggenhout’s first extensive solo exhibition in Belgium, M is presenting a retrospective of his diverse work from the early 1990s until today. The exhibition brings together 30 works, both small and medium-sized works on plinths and recent works in which inflatable elements and colour play an important role. The exhibition highlights the diversity and evolution of his consistent artistic practice.
Peter Buggenhout’s installations are a mirror of the world around us. His rough sculptures are indefinable. They sometimes look like the remnants after devastations or abandoned structures, while at other times they are reminiscent of archaeological remains. The building blocks of Buggenhout’s sculptures are formless and abject materials that no longer have a function or meaning: building waste, packaging materials, sheets of plastic, frayed textiles, horse hair, blood, cows’ stomachs, and house dust. Buggenhout confronts the viewer with a raw reality that inspires both fascination and repulsion; it both attracts and repels. A well-considered internal logic underlies these formally complex sculptures. The installations by no means intend to be directly representational.
Curator: Eva Wittocx
We did it before, we will do it again
In conjunction with the exhibition, a new monograph will be published featuring numerous images both of work by Peter Buggenhout and the art and artists that influence his work (ranging from historical art to temples and the natural world). Texts by Selen Ansen and William L. Rathje, an extensive interview with M curator Eva Wittocx as well as fragments of texts written by Buggenhout himself.
Published by Jnf Editions / Editions de l’Amateur (English/French)
400 pages, 200 images, texts: French/English
Biography
Peter Buggenhout, born in 1963, lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. Peter Buggenhout’s work has recently been featured at Taipei Biennial 2014, CIAP Vassivière, MoMA PS1 New York, La Maison Rouge and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, De Pont Tilburg and TRACK in Ghent. He is represented by Konrad Fischer Galerie Düsseldorf-Berlin and Galerie Laurent Godin Paris.
For more information, please contact Veerle Ausloos: veerle.ausloos [at] leuven.be.
