Dimitri Vangrunderbeek (b.1964) is a visual artist. His art practice originates in installation art issues with a specific interest in physical sculptural acts. He teaches  mixed-media and experimental architectural design at the Faculty of Architecture KU Leuven, BE. 

 

 

 

Text fragment from the author's Phd dissertation From Ordinary Object to Sculpture, 2015.

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On the one hand, my artistic work takes form from a natural drive to manifest myself spatially, and, on the other hand, through an interest in the analysis of the formal qualities of objects and materials. The way I manifest myself spatially originates in sculptural acts carried out on ordinary objects using ordinary materials. By doing so, sculptures and installations arise that have a strong spatial impact. I create a new reading of the formal appearance of ordinary objects and ordinary materials by means of a specific physical experience. Human proportion and human scale play an important role in the way the works are presented and experienced. The acts that I come up with originate from the formal, material and spatial qualities of the ordinary objects and materials. These acts can be extensive and radical in the sense that I remove the function of the ordinary object in the search for qualities of materiality, form and volume. My interest in the ordinary object is about the aspects of (collective) memory that it possesses. I’m interested in making installations and objects that allow me to bring together the outcome of these sculptural acts, Composition, framing and precision in the making are essential concepts to articulate form and material qualities; they allow for a poetic reading of ordinary objects.

 

As an artist I work in between two poles. I make installations in which I create a stillness and a frozenness, as to preserve objects and the unknown memories connected to the objects. On the other hand, I also make temporary settings that are very spatial, with visually strong arrangements. Ordinary furniture gives me a feeling of warmth and I choose it because of the beautiful forms it tends to possess. At the same time, however, I use these pieces of furniture as abstract, monumental volumes with which to make temporary settings, occupying and defining the space.