Hilde De Decker: On the Move

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Hilde De Decker

Imagine you visit an exhibition and there is nothing to see. You wander through the corridors and notice that everyone left the building long ago and they are not coming back.
The museum sounds hollow, though the rooms are not empty.
If you look closely, it is precisely that which is not there which is on view, that which is no longer there or in fact never was.

You realize the only art for you to see is the art of leaving out.
Yet to leave out is not to diminish. It is a constructive notion. Viewers are invited to fill in the gaps themselves.
It is up to them to construct a mental image of the collection.
That is why the personal is not to be found in a predetermined theme, but in each viewer’s individual imagination.
The (omitted) picture appeals to a form of recognition, familiarity, memory.
One jerk on the thread is enough to open up your own archive of mental images.
In and through their absence, the worn “tolerated“ blurred things give renewed presence to materiality.
After all, the suggestion of a picture prompts another, more subtle filling-in of the concept of matter.
The blurring leaves a trace and renders the picture’s absence once more tangible.
Filled with sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015, this exhibition wavers on the edge of the tangible and the absent picture.


Hilde De Decker lives and works in Belgium. Since 2000 she teaches, gives lectures and workshops at different art schools.
She has been teaching at the Jewelry Design Department - Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2000-2008) and since 2008 she is Head of the Jewelry Department, Sint Lucas, Antwerp.