1. Research Library

        This is the show and the show is many things

        Bart De Baere, Pierre Giquel, and Dirk Pültau

        S.M.A.K. 1994

        ISBN 1994034116

      1. Catalog to the revolutionary exhibition This is the show and the show is many things, S.M.A.K., Ghent, curated by Bart de Baere (17.09.1994–27.11.1994), which one review described as ‘a fun palace, a rumpus room, a discount warehouse, a museum without walls, a wasteland and a Wunder-Kabinett of the marvellous and the inconsequential.’ 13 participating artists (including Louise Bourgeois, Fabrice Hybert, Mark Manders, Jason Rhoades, Anne Decock, Uri Tzaig, Henrietta Lehtonen (redesigned the museum café’s mugs), Eran Schaerf (set up a work station in the space), and Maria Roosen) contributed physical works, ephemeral interventions, and installations (well-known painter Luc Tuymans’s artist contribution was lighting design of the exhibition space), the presentation of which morphed and shifted throughout the duration of the exhibition. An exhibition about process, collaboration, chance encounter, and whimsy; this show stands apart from the ‘relational aesthetics’ concerns that came to define much of 1990s art as an exceptional example of a particularly intelligent and risky strain of experimentation exploring the limits of how the viewer (and artists themselves) might interact within an exhibition space.