Joelle Tuerlinckx

Joelle Tuerlinckx’s art is based on a sustained and time-consuming engagement with simple things. For three decades, she has gathered found items or articles of daily use that crossed her path and methodically collected them in a comprehensive archive. These objects have inspired her to reflect on what it means to be a human being—they are, to use the artist’s term, elements of the real.

Her work grows out of the observation, experimental application, and, as she calls it, transcription of these elements: a kind of (re)reading that seeks to strip them of their ostensible banality and comprehend and show them for what they truly are. To this end, Tuerlinckx employs a wide range of sculptural and painterly approaches, including the manufacture of replicas and the translation of objects into different materials. She plays with shifts of scale and alterations of surface textures, which she manipulates with techniques like colorizing or scanning and reprinting.

(courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel)

Joelle Tuerlinckx has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kunstmuseum Basel; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Arnolfini, Bristol; Wiels, Brussels; Reina Sofia, Madrid; Mamco, Geneva; The Power Plant, Toronto; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; S.M.A.K, Ghent; and Witte de With, Rotterdam.

Group shows include Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; IAC, Villeurbanne; Secession, Vienna; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; M HKA, Antwerp; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; and MoMA, New York.

Upcoming projects include the 2017 Skulpturen Projekte in Münster, and a big solo exhibition in Dia, Beacon in 2018.

Joelle Tuerlinckx is represented by the following gallery;
click through to discover more of her work.

Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne / Berlin  

Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna