Guillaume Bijl

Composition Trouvée, 1989

Guillaume Bijl found a provocative way of stepping up Andy Warhol’s vigorously pursued eradication of the difference between artwork and commodity. Since the 1970s, Bijl has been transposing gyms and exchange offices from their everyday context to other locations. Bijl distinguishes between four different types of transposition: transformational and situational installations, the Compositions Trouvées and the so-called Sorry works. The former transform one reality into a reality existing in parallel and yet being completely independent, or stage fiction in reality. One example is the re-opening of a French supermarket, which had survived virtually unchanged for 30 years, in a gallery in Basel. This had been preceded by fictitious letters – attributed by Bijl to a Belgian authority – in which art was declared to be superfluous because of its non-functional character. Bijl himself describes his Compositions Trouvées as “contemporary, archaeological still-lives”. Their composition is based on found objects which are newly arranged as relics of an economic or taste-related dressing.