Didier Vermeiren

In the late 1970s and the aftermath of the ‘Brancusian revolution’, Didier Vermeiren (1951, Brussels) began to put the question of the pedestal at the heart of his reflection
and to consider the complex relationship between sculpture and the element on which it is traditionally presented. It was the start of a long journey of exploration, ‘looking for the base and the present’, during which the pedestal came to establish an autonomous sculptural destiny. At stake for Vermeiren was the relationship to the floor, to space and place, but also to the history of sculpture. From the outset, photography has also been a crucial instrument of his plastic dynamism. To this day, his dual artistic practice results in sculptures that create photographs and photographs that create sculptures.

This book, conceived by the artist, accompanies the retrospective Double Exposition presented at WIELS, Brussels, from September 2022 to January 2023. It contains numerous images from his photographic archive.