GUILLAUME BIJL + Agricola Due Leoni, limited edition, 2020.

GUILLAUME BIJL + Agricola Due Leoni, limited edition, 2020.

Guillaume Bijl (b. 1946) is a Belgian artist living in Antwerp. In this edition, Bijl re-purposes a drawing from the 1970s, investigating the fine line in matters of taste. A found object that has also surfaced in large-scale sculptures, Bijl's bear-with-books pays witty tribute to a place many of us have had to rediscover: home.

Guillaume Bijl has lifted segments of life and placed them on a pedestal, or center stage, for some forty years. His earliest installations, something on the order of Ed Kienholz but more normal, something close to John Waters, but more unsettling, something close to Marcel Broodthaers, but more extensive, included gyms, mattress stores, and hair salons. As if to bring the world outside truly in, Bijl extended his gaze to the neighborhoods surrounding art centers, to the taste of people on the street, to the activities and labor that really takes place, in cities packaged as Flemish, or French, or beyond. Deconstructing identity long before such a word became modish, Bijl’s dry wit and mordant critique of bad (and good) taste tickled Cornelia’s fancy already in the 1980s. It’s a thrill to work with him, and so she has, in exhibitions on certificates by artists and carpets by artists, as well as the present collaboration. The edition is currently on view at the Royal Academy of Arts, Antwerp (2021), and featured in a publication on the multiples and editions of Guillaume Bijl (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2021).

Left: Guillaume Bijl, Composition trouvée, ready made sculpture, 1970s, courtesy the artist
Right: Guillaume Bijl, Composition trouvée, proposal for public sculpture, drawing, 1970s, courtesy the artist