Wallonian History in Minimalist Terms

I have heard a great deal of complaints about the museum this afternoon, but I really enjoyed it. After learning a little more about the complexities of this city, I think the museum and its eclectic mix of exhibitions and art forms perfectly summarizes the city's own complex history as it shifted from an industrial hub to one dependent upon its counterpart.

Beginning my exploration of the museum with the work of Bernd Lohaus, a German artist interested in natural materials, I was struck by the juxtaposition of rawness and creation of the exhibition, the stripped down naturalness of the wood planks accompanied by a simultaneous understanding of the shaved evenness of the planks and their deliberately linear pattern, a symmetrical and aesthetic organization that cannot be found in nature. The organization of the wood, piled and aligned, emphasizes its role as a raw material, not in nature but in industry. Though not one of the two main natural resources, coal and iron, that helped Wallonia to emerge as a leader of the Industrial Revolution in the contiguous European continent, the wood in the exhibition functions as an appropriate metaphor for the cause-effect relationship of creation and destruction that Wallonia experienced during the course of its later history.

The exhibition space for this artist was well thought out, though at first glance it appears random and in disarray, much like a glimpse of an artist's workspace during the production of artwork. This creates questions about the art form in general. What comprises art? What qualifies as finished art? Are these two forms exclusive of each other? While unsure of the correct answer to these questions, I believe the process of creating art is an artwork itself. The exhibition succeeds in presenting the beginning stage of a work as its own finished piece, presenting a conversation of the simultaneous existence of partiality and wholeness, destruction and creation.

I am particularly interested in this relation between creation and destruction as it relates to the history of Wallonia. Wallonia reached a peak in economy during the European Industrial Revolution, while its counterpoint, Flanders, floundered. Years later, with the introduction of globalization, Wallonia experienced a severe decline in its economy as Flanders rose to economic success, providing an example of creation and destruction existing simultaneously within Belgium as a whole.

I see this relation in Lohaus' artwork due to its minimalism. It functions as both a partial and whole piece, while appearing to be in the midst of creation or perhaps mid-destruction. It appears to embody this very history of Wallonia in the simplest of terms.

 

Sophia