Robert Irwin

The collection opens with a column conceived by Robert Irwin in 1969.

Originally trained as a painter, Irwin very early on moved away from the object-as-picture to focus instead on the conditions of perceptual experience. Between 1965 and 1969, anticipating this column, he developed the « Disc » series, in which the object is still present but already put under pressure: its contours dissolve, shifting attention towards the relationship between the work, the space that contains it, and-crucially-one’s own act of seeing.

In 1970, Irwin completely emptied his Californian studio, leaving only this five-sided column of optical acrylic at its centre. Almost invisible, without any spectacular effect, the work does not draw attention to itself. Rather, it subtly alters our experience of the place: it displaces it, destabilises it, awakens it. In doing so, Irwin makes perceptible our condition as sensing beings in relation to our environment-what one might call the time of the body, prior even to that of words.

That same year, Irwin permanently closed his studio, abandoning the production of objects in favour of site-specific works conceived for the lived world. He described his art as « conditional »: never autonomous, always situated.

Within the Brussels collection, because the house that hosts the work does not belong to us, the column had to be placed on a platform. This solution is not ideal, as it risks reinstating the work as an object to be looked at rather than an experience to be lived. We nevertheless chose to live with it here, while imagining a future setting more attuned to its nature-perhaps, one day, in the corner of a Venetian portego…

Like many artists associated with the Light & Space movement, Irwin did not wish his works to be photographed. They are not tixed images, but perceptual devices that can only exist through experience.

What is offered here, therefore, is not so much an image of the work as an invitation to encounter it.