Image credit: Installation view of Maarten Vanden Eynde's, A Chain of Events, 2021. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
Vanden Eyden's artistic practice has an almost archaeological approach to history, but also to our own contemporary time.
Vanden Eynde is deeply fascinated by the connection between the development of technology, including written language, tools and payment methods, and man's own evolution, such as societies, cultures and civilizations.
His practice is embedded in long term research projects that focus on numerous subjects of social and political relevance such as post-industrialism, capitalism and ecology. His work is situated exactly on the borderline between the past and the future; sometimes looking forward to the future of yesterday, sometimes looking back to the history of tomorrow. Currently he is investigating the influence of transatlantic trade of pivotal materials like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, cotton and uranium, on evolution and progress, the creation of nations and other global power structures. The initiated project Triangular Trade traces back the origin of the different materials and follows their (r)evolutionary path as they are processed and transformed into 'world changing wonders’.
In his artistry, Vanden Eynde investigates how we try to establish collective understanding through our tendency to interpret phenomenons and put together larger narratives based on available information. He looks at how different cultures examine and collect fragments and broken pieces from throughout history to contextualize them and thereby us. His works emphasize how we advocate for an objectively correct view on history, but stresses, indirectly and ironically, how our subjective point of view always colors or discolors our understanding of history, as it does to our present.
The last work of the final presentation of Vanden Eyndes Ph.D is presented in the entrance hall of KMD, Møllendalsveien 61. Fat Man 3D (2022) is a copy in bobbin lace of the atomic bomb, code name Fat Man, that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on 9 August 1945. The work is produced with the help of 3D bobbin lace expert Rita Van Cotthem and laces together the interlinked histories of cotton and uranium in an immersive and explosive installation. Don’t forget to go and have a look!
The exhibition is in cooperation with Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design and presents Maarten Vanden Eynde’s artistic result for his PhD project that is part of the overarching artistic research project ‘Matter, Gesture, Soul’ (2020-2024) at the University of Bergen (UiB).