Tapta
— Esprit Ouvert

Esprit ouvert (1997) marks the symbolic departure point of the art trail Endless Express. This monumental sculpture is one of the last commissions for public space made by the artist. Presenting itself as a portal or a place of passage, the work expresses Tapta’s enduring interest in spatial interventions relating to bodies moving through the world. The geometric steel arch seemingly opens itself, providing a view onto the built environment; it sits on an elliptical pool of water that captures the reflections of its brilliant surfaces, and dynamically activates them. Esprit ouvert exemplifies the artist’s love of contrasting forms and ideas, never static and always suggesting a transition from one state to another, between opening and closure, distance and rapprochement.   

Tapta (Maria Irena Wierusz-Kowalski) was born in 1926 in Poland and died in 1997 in Brussels. Her practice ranged widely, notably from textile works in the seventies to rubber sculptures in the eighties. She taught at La Cambre for many years, heading the workshop ‘sculpture souple’, and exerting an indelible influence on a younger generation of artists.

The art trail Endless Express_ _is spread over different destinations along the railway line between Ostend and Eupen. Taking the public sculpture Esprit ouvert by Tapta as a symbolic point of departure, seven artists were invited to present new works around the stations and tracks. With the train as a unifying element, they explore the networked histories embedded in this landscape and entangled with this line. With new works by Che Go Eun, Inas Halabi, Flaka Haliti, Chloé Malcotti, Sophie Nys, Marina Pinsky and Laure Prouvost.

The Ostend-Eupen railway line is the longest in Belgium, traversing its three official language regions in about three hours — from the royal seaside resort in the west to the industrial river valley in the east, with the capital of Brussels in the centre. The train introduced shortly after Belgium was founded in 1830 — speaks in a broader way of industrialisation, the promise of progress, and how these forces have transformed this country.

The artists included in this exhibition are all based in Belgium or its neighbouring countries. Some imagine the train as a mythical creature re-enchanting the world, others question the notion of thinking in a straight line, as well as labour and its rhythms, or playfully disrupt the clockwork time that helped shape the society of speed we live in today.

Curator: Caroline Dumalin