Belgian Artist
Born: in Antwerp, Belgium, 1946
lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.


Guillaume Bijl works on the edge, on the borderline between the high-brow world of the museum or gallery and the everyday environments which constitute the backdrop of our lives. When he takes the “Supermarket”, “Fitness Centre”, “Launderette” – or even “The Museum” or “The Art Gallery” – out of the familiar contexts where we expect to find them and into the neutral atmosphere of a realistic museum installation, he makes us feel disoriented and confused about the meaning of our dreams and desires.

Bijl does not need precious materials, he simply but carefully arranges things we have seen and which we thought we knew well. And immediately questions arise, not only about our daily lives but also surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) about the world of high culture.

For the Youth Prints, Bijl created a set of iconic images posing as “Souvenirs of the 20th century”. The set can be seen as the catalogue of a museum collection. When looking at these images inevitably we begin to question values: we wonder whether the people they refer to were really so important or, alternatively, were possibly more important than is generally believed.