The medium is memory, the support the souvenir
Nicolas Baeyens
This book is not the outcome of a completed line of thought, but the continuation of an artistic process. It connects directly to Nicolas Baeyens’ visual practice, in which sculptural fragments circulate, transform, and generate meaning beyond their material form. Just as the sculptures detach themselves from their physical composition and continue to live on in the memory of the viewer, this book likewise seeks to behave as an object of thought.
The publication is deliberately structured in a fragmentary way. Not to suggest fragmentation, but to approach the artist’s research environment as accurately as possible. Artistic research rarely unfolds in a linear manner. Each chapter functions as an autonomous fragment, comparable to a sculptural element that can exist on its own, yet in relation to other fragments and within different contexts continually forms new mental constellations.
The sequence is not prescriptive, and a hierarchy between the chapters is intentionally absent. Theory, autobiographical reflection, art-historical context, and neuroscientific insights are placed alongside and through one another. This structure reflects not only Baeyens’ practice, but also his understanding of art as a mediating process, in which meaning emerges through the interaction between social structures, subjective sensoriality (imagination), and objective context. The book carries multiple times and worlds simultaneously and unfolds as an open, unstable, and meandering structure.
The book does not claim to offer a definitive answer, but seeks to open space for reflection, for doubt, and for shared thinking. Just as the sculptural work truly comes into being in the encounter with the viewer, this book likewise takes shape only in the experience of the reader.
This publication is the result of the PhD research by Nicolas Baeyens at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and at ARIA/UAntwerp (2020-2025).
The publication is in Dutch, but you can download an English translation here.
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