Shovels

For Shifting Ground, co-curated by studio minimètre and Béatrice Vancaillie, three pieces respond to the exhibition’s theme through different registers of displacement. Ground shifts in multiple ways: sometimes it rolls, sometimes it jumps, and sometimes it disappears entirely beneath people’s feet.

Roulé

A bent wood circle mounted on a shovel head. Where the previous piece jumps, this one simply rolls. The piece plays with ideas of circularity and labor: a wheel made functional by being attached to the very tool meant to stay put in the ground. Wood bent through steam, mounted on steel. Traditional craft meeting an improbable use.

The Seven-League Shovel

An absurdist proposition: a spring-loaded excavation device that promises to cover vast distances with each dig. Part garden tool, part fairy tale prosthetic, it takes the exhibition’s theme of shifting ground quite literally. Whether it actually works is beside the point.

Darvas Vase:

A ribbed ceramic vase made during the residency at Casa Darvas-La Roche in Oradea, where the ground beneath people’s feet has shifted repeatedly, sometimes with devastating consequences. The piece translates the building’s Viennese Secession geometry into something that can hold water and flowers. An ornamental object aware of its own weight.