Curated by Dirk Pauwels

Since the late 1960s, Maria Nordman has employed a range of strategies to probe the experiences of co-presence, the construction of meaning, and a corresponding politics of public and private space. This summer, smak presents “GEO-AESTHETICS,” a survey of drawings, sculptures, and performances from throughout the artist’s four-decade career. In addition to its display of seminal works such as FILMROOM: SMOKE, 1967–, the artist’s first projection, and a 1992 cedar structure realized in collaboration with master craftsman Makoto Imai, the exhibition will emphasize Nordman’s long-standing engagement with the city of Ghent. For the opening weekend, the artist will reactivate an inhabitable installation she built near the museum in 2000. Situated in a meadow and stocked with provisions, the dwelling neatly encapsulates her ongoing explorations of the relationships between interior space, the adjacent atmosphere, and intersubjectivity.

— James Merle Thomas