Guillaume Bijl

Self-taught Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl is mostly known for his alternative take on conceptual art, his desire to directly engage the viewer and his Transformation Installations begun in the late 1970s. In these works he created meticulous imitations of everyday realities in galleries and museums, mainly focusing on trade and exchange locations--whether in commodities, information or skills.

Bijl’s practice is however much richer and more diverse and largely goes beyond this landmark series. This reference monograph thus reveals the scope of his thinking and art during the last four decades. Built around a comprehensive essay by John C. Welchman entitled "Jumps of the Cat: Guillaume Bijl’s Simulation Therapy," the book spans the early Treatments (1975–1978) to the ongoing Transformation Installations, Situation Installations, Compositions Trouvées and Sorry bodies of work. Grounded in and marked by a number of economic, social and cultural conditions, Bijl’s works are a stimulating reflection and synthesis of our current times. As John C. Welchman writes: "Bijl's work made important contributions to many of the issues addressed by the Western neo-avant-garde art world from the 1970s to now--questions about performativity and spectacle; elitism and "lowness"; simulation and "commodity art"; life-scaled corporeality and the uncanny; appropriation, archives and the postmodern readymade; negotiations with selfhood and artifice; and the tension between work situated in art institutional and public spaces."

Guillaume Bijl (born 1946) studied theater, and has been a scenographer as well as a painter. He is represented by At the Gallery/modern and contemporary art (Antwerp), Galerie Nagel Draxler (Cologne/Berlin), Guy Pieters Gallery (Knokke-Heist, Belgium) and André Simoens Gallery (Knokke, Belgium).