Le Tag/ 200 m or Deadline Middelheim 2019

The artwork is a rework of an earlier project. During Ria Pacquée's exhibition in 2019 at the Middelheim Museum, the line was reapplied every week by a museum employee. They wore orange work clothes — a subtle reference to Antwerp street workers. In this way, the work rubs against the line between art and urban gesture, between transience and precision.

Tuerlinckx shows how simple lines organise our daily lives, often without us realising it. What does a line do to you? Do you stop for it or do you cross it? Do you suddenly start behaving or moving differently? The work is transient and therefore has to be repeated again and again. It is not only made of chalk but also of action, time, uniform, place and spectator. All these elements together form the artwork.

Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels and investigates the basic principles of art within conceptual art. She works with simple and pure materials such as paper, rope, text and light. In her work, points, circles, lines and colours keep recurring. She creates spatial installations in dialogue with the exhibition space. The presence of the spectator completes the work.