Aldo Brinkhoff

An impressive professional toolkit, a research station with numerous ingredients in carefully labelled containers, a table-top installation to produce timelapse videos overnight... Few artists create such an elaborate private workshop within the EKWC as Aldo Brinkhoff. The results of his research are on the opposite wall. Initially, it appears as if he simply created white ordinary bathroom tiles. But over time, the shiny unfired surface starts to crack, the fragments curl up and eventually fall to the floor. Brinkhoff managed to influence the rate of desiccation by adding different amounts of hygroscopic glycerine to the clay. The resulting work, a tiled wall that disintegrates in phases, plays havoc with the imagination. A durable surface is falling apart at a disturbing pace, at once out of control and orchestrated, a natural disaster timed to execute itself in exactly three months. In Brinkhoff’s hands, destruction becomes a fascinating tool for transformation.

Besides his experimentations with glycerine, Brinkhoff used several other compounds, as well as different compositions of clay, to try to influence the drying, cracking pattern, and disintegration of his work. He explored the EKWC glaze library and outsourced materials he could not otherwise locate — discovering and rediscovering that the producer, batch, and intended purpose of the materials produced different results. Brinkhoff both created work for an upcoming exhibition and laid the foundations for further work, researching and creating slowly crumbling sculptural objects (household radiators and plumbing pipes). For this, Brinkhoff made several plasters moulds during his residency and work with a variety of casting materials (clay, wax, plaster).