Roundabout #1: Paul Hendrikse

Paul Hendrikse, Model of Attribution (I'm No Longer Dead, I'm In Love), unfired clay sculptures, installation view, The Ideal Form, CC Mechelen/de Garage, Mechelen, 2013

For the inaugural Roundabout exhibition at the Aubette Pavilion at The Middelheim Museum, artist Paul Hendrikse revisits his project The Ideal Form (2007/2013). In The Ideal Form, Hendrikse investigated the legacy of Lode Craeybeckx, who, as the mayor of Antwerp from 1947 until his death in 1976, oversaw the city’s rapid expansion in the post-war years. One of Craeybeckx’s signal accomplishments was the transformation of the Middelheim Park, destroyed during World War Two, into an open-air sculpture museum.

Although he is remembered for his enthusiastic engagement on behalf of The Middelheim Museum, Craeybeckx also established a complex collection, whose political undertones The Ideal Form brings, if partially, to light.

A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Den Bosch, Paul Hendrikse (born Terneuzen, Netherlands, 1977) went on to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. He has exhibited at, among other spaces, Rosa Brux, Brussels (2015), CC Mechelen/de Garage, Mechelen (2013), and Bozar, Brussels (2011), and has performed or screened his work at numerous festivals and biennials including Les Rencontres Internationales (2015), Playground (Museum M/STUK, 2014) and Contour (Mechelen, 2013).