Catalogue Detached Involvement

Kristien Daem regularly carries out projects that other artists did not complete. She finds out about these projects because she comes across a design or a sketch or because the project is mentioned in a biography. As soon as she finds a project that has never been carried out she starts to do research to find as many details as she can to represent it or even complete it. She also did so with the work of Robert Smithson and Piero Manzoni.

This series of photographs by Kristien Daem is called #1: Notations for Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Koln, 1976 (not executed) by Fred Sandback. Sandback is known for his minimalist line sculptures. Using light material and large, voluminous shapes. There are two drawings by Sandback of this project, which he made on the floorplan of Heiner Friedrich’s art gallery in Cologne, Germany. The first drawing consists of four diagonal lines, two of which are 1.37 metres above ground level and two of which run parallel to the floor. The second drawing has 5 diagonal lines, three of which are high and two low.

The location that used to be a gallery has now become Gerhard Richter’s archive. Two years ago Daem took photographs of the offices. Over the course of time there had been some changes: partitioning walls had been added to the area that was once open with supporting pillars. After attaching a transparent layer to these photographs, she drew the work by Fred Sandback on them. This is how Kristien Daem draws attention to projects that could easily have been lost to art history. She also raises questions with her work about the relationship between photography and art and she explores what happens when the supporting role of photography is reversed.

Kristien Daem at the opening night of Detached Involvement (photo Bas Czerwinski)