The luminaires
"Dedobbeleer is a researcher - in his explorations he follows his own, rather meandering path of curiosity and affinity - and an intellectual with a remarkably comprehensive knowledge of the most diverse cultural references and influences".
This is how curator Zoë Gray characterizes the work of artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer, born in 1975 in Halle, Belgium.
Leuchtkörper in der Eingangshalle. Foto: Reto Kaufmann
For several years, the artist has regularly visited the island of Murano, which is famous for Venetian glass production. For an exhibition at the Mai36 gallery in Zurich in 2025, for example, he used surplus or broken glass to create whimsical light sculptures. His lights move between functional and sculptural and allow Dedobbeleer to explore themes of artistic and creative production as well as the history of the presentation and perception of art. At the Kunst Museum Winterthur | Reinhart am Stadtgarten, he has now realized the lighting in the entrance area, which oscillates between functional design and sculptural form and at the same time thematizes light as a prerequisite for the perception of art. Yet despite all the art-historical references and discourses, his idiosyncratic and playful transformations of the everyday are always a pleasure to behold.
Eingangshalle Kunst Museum Winterthur | Reinhart am Stadtgarten. Foto: Reto Kaufmann
The artist:
"The installation in the foyer of the museum attempts to heighten visitors' awareness of its public character. It functions as a buffer zone between the outdoor area and the exhibition halls, as a transitional space between the fleeting nature of urban strolls and the concentrated focus of a museum visit. The luminaires reinterpret the public furniture that is normally found outside a building and thus bring the outside into the interior of the building, extending the outside space into the interior. Formally, the installation is based on elements that are already present in the building, in particular Murano lights from the 1950s. Here, the Murano glass elements, which usually convey a distinct interior quality, have been redesigned and adapted to a formal language that relates to arcades and exterior paths. They are intended to invite visitors to stroll past and up into the secluded rooms of the museum."
Koenraad Dedobbeleer
Der Künstler Koenraad Dedobbeleer. Foto: Reto Kaufmann
About the artist
Dedobbeleer does not see his works as narratives, but rather as containers for stories. The artist's "dysfunctional" objects appear familiar, but at the same time always seem to want to be something else. They are peppered with subtle allusions and art historical references. With often only minimal interventions, the sculptor changes the structure of everyday objects, their dimensions, materiality or color, and thus detaches them from their original functional context in order to examine their visual and cultural qualities in the context of art. Dedobbeleer works with museum presentation forms and dispositives and thus betrays a proximity to so-called "institutional critique", which he undermines with charming ease.
In 2019, the Kunst Museum Winterthur dedicated a comprehensive exhibition to his work, which was previously shown at the WIELS - Centre d'Art Contemporain in Brussels and then traveled on to the Kunsthalle Hannover.