Hugo Roelandt
(c)photo: M HKA, 2016
Zonder titel, schoenen in plaaster / Untitled, Shoes in Plaster (Solo-Performance Stadtarchiv Kassel), 1977
Solo-Performance Stadtarchiv, in the fringes of the official programme of Documenta 6 in Kassel, 1977
Remake for 10 years New Reform, Oud Hospitaal, Aalst, 1988
Roelandt was never represented by a commercial gallery. He was not even interested in selling his work. Roger D’Hondt tells the anecdote that after the artist’s 1977 performance in Kassel a collector so insisted on buying the remains of it (a pair of old shoes in a box full of plaster) that Roelandt finally consented – in order to stop the nagging. In the artist’s archive two similar boxes were found – the remains of a tryout and a remake. Yet these are clearly exceptions; very few artefacts remain of his performances and installations. For Roelandt, art was always a performance, a temporary event, whose remains only have documentary value. (Marc Holthof, 2016)
