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Herman Van Ingelgem maakt installaties, video's, objecten en tekeningen. Zelf spreekt hij over 'protheses': verlengstukken van zijn denken, uitbreidingen van zijn lichaam. Met deze artefacten tast hij het thema van de architectuur af en onderzoekt hij hoe specifieke plaatsen onze condities beïnvloeden. Hij evoceert onze private leefomgeving met half opgebouwde huiselijke kamers, replica's van meubels en gebruiksvoorwerpen. Daarnaast bespeelt hij de openbare ruimte met zelfgemaakte gebouwen: een voetbalstadion, prefabwoonblok, hotel, zwembad, een stand op een autosalon … De ons vertrouwde ruimtelijke structuren worden niet identiek nagebouwd maar opzettelijk uitgevoerd in afwijkende proporties of in andere materialen. Hierdoor fungeren ze als stoorzender of obstakel en markeren de talrijke spanningen tussen concept, verwachting en realiteit.
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Herman Van Ingelgem (1968) creates imaginary spaces out of architectural metonymies and proposes us to live in them. Architectural elements are assembied in ways that seem natural, but upon reflection make no sense. Thus, he puts a lamp behind a shower-curtain, a curtain-rail in front of a wall-lamp; he doses the standard distance between coat-hook and ceiling-lamp, or between air-vent, radiator pipe and ceiling-lamp. By putting these part-situations behind glass, as in his Flightcases (2003), he effectively detracts from their incoherence precisely by showing it -we must remember that showing is always also hiding. The viewer's familiarity with the individual objects and their general distribution is even reinstated by the pieces' overall positioning. However, despite the immediate inadequateness of our gaze to grasp what is really going on, we perceive and store residual images of each situation. Later on we will recall these images, will return to the pieces and realise that the space we find ourselves in exists only in our mind.
His painted propositions of architectural structures are merely suggestive places, part-buildings. Similarly his roominstallations gather together countless part-objects forcing the spectator to do most of the construction work mentally. While what we see is not unfamiliar, the things are not made of their "own" materiais. Thus, a TV and a stereo are made of plywood, aluminous projection on a wall is simply painted and a Wellington boot is made of concrete. These objects have been divested of their proper functions and of their exchange value, displaying instead their use value as triggers of objects and space in our creative imagination.
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fragment of a large article on 'Young Belgian Artists' by David Ulrichs in Lapiz 224, June 2006