OOREBEEK, Willem
OBSTAKLES

This book, by no means complete nor comprehensive, contains something like one hundred and twenty descriptions: re-readings of fifty years’ work and the materiality of production . . . These are numbered according to recollection, organised under headings, and translated from Dutch to English. The translations are coloured by two years of conversation—accounting for ambiguity, rabbit-holes, and an [un]conscious preference for “ofschoon…” “quasi-” “enzovoort.” Repetition, alliteration, and other material, musical and metric devices [“every election perpetuates this sincerely fragile momentum”] are placed on the page, quite intentionally, designed for memory and recall.

A very special one. Edited by Willem Oorebeek and Will Holder, and published on the occasion of Oorebeek’s eponymous exhibition at Wiels, Brussels, Obstakles proposes an overview of the artist’s work, through descriptions that are as complex (and complete) as the pieces are, insisting on the actual, material elements that define them. The works are reproduced full-scale (apart from a series of b/w pictures that are slides from Oorebeek’s lecture, BILD, ODER), on the back of the printing sheets with the text. You’ll see how it all works by yourself – all the pieces from the riddle are there.

Published by ROMA Publications, 2025
Design by Will Holder
Monographs / Book Culture / Artists' Writings