It's walls, floors, ceiling and windows. The status of the artwork as a spatial (presentation)-framework

The work of the artist Richard Venlet (°1964) is hybrid. It combines sculpture, installation art, artistic research, exhibition design and architecture. In many of his works, Venlet provides the given space, often that of the exhibition, the gallery or the museum, a new configuration or position. Through composed, given and designed environments, Venlet has developed over the years an autonomous artistic practice in which he investigates the culture of exhibiting together with artists, architects and curators. Within his oeuvre there is no essential distinction between the artwork and the context of the exhibition.
As the practice of making art uses a specific field of experience or methodology, Venlet chose to approach this doctoral research from the perspective of the practice of art itself. The doctoral research "Its Walls, Floors, Ceiling and Windows" was therefore inseparably linked to a series of artistic projects and cases. These research objects were developed and made public in the form of artworks, exhibitions, public debates, presentations and publications.
The PHD project "Its Walls, Floors, Ceiling and Windows", and the eponymous exhibition in BOZAR, shows Venlet's research into exhibition conditions within the development of its own practice. Within this largely self-referential trajectory, the archive, the practice of art itself and the reflection on this are brought together. In his dissertation, Venlet broadens this "retrospective investigation" into a more interpretable artistic context on the basis of a series of discussions with various actors from the art scene.
For the exhibition "Its Walls, Floors, Ceiling and Windows", works of art and similarly related artifacts from Venlet's practice were cited and presented as part fragments within one large whole. These various elements of research and artistic practice not only literally shaped the exhibition but became the "exhibition" itself. A program of lectures, debates, conversations and a performance took place in the same room as an integrated element within this exhibition project. Here students, researchers, artists, architects and exhibition visitors discussed the context and culture of the exhibition as an artistic practice.