Edith Dekyndt trained at the workshop of Gabriel Belgeonne at ESAPV[1]where she was more interested in the physical and chemical processes related to printing techniques than to engraving. In 1987, she was granted a scholarship, and stayed in Italy where she conducted research on Pierro della Francesca and his relationship to geometry and light. She won the Prix du Hainaut in 1990 and became a professor in 1997 at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg (ESAD).
In 1999, she created the co-op Universal Research of Subjectivity that she designed as an investigative laboratory and which became an association for the promotion and diffusion of contemporary art in 2004. That same year, the BPS22 organised her first major monographic exhibition. Her works are part of numerous collections, in Belgium and abroad, including that of MOMA (Museum Of Modern Art), New York.
Her first works used space as a field of investigation, in which geometrical elements intervene, and where light plays a fundamental role. Edith Dekyndt observes and highlights the processes of daily life and physical phenomena, through a minimalist aesthetic. She reveals poetically what is hardly perceptible, such as dust, moisture, magnetic particles, waves or static electricity, constantly playing with the relationship between the microscopic and the macroscopic. Her approach is close to the scientific realm, while having a sensitive finality that avoids any dryness.
In 1995, Edith Dekyndt turned the Escaut[2] architectural workshop into a laboratory in which she subjected a series of objects and materials to the passage of time; their transformation expressing the inevitable aging of the material that the video recording manages to capture. Edith Dekyndt uses video as an extension of her sculptural research. The artist produces works in order to offer the viewer a singular physical and mental experience, which is fully integrated into the exhibition space[3].
[1] The ESAPV, Ecole Supérieure des Arts plastiques et visuels, de Mons (BE) has been renamed ARTS² in 2012. It was formerly the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
[2] Architects’ co-op founded by Olivier Bastin in 1989.
[3] Regarding the artist’s career and approach, see: Edith Dekyndt. I Remember Earth, Bruxelles, Facteur Humain Editions, 2009.
