You are now listening to the wall text of the exhibition Sarah Smolders – A Space Begins, With Speaking.

Sarah Smolders’ work arises in dialogue with a specific space and its architectural features, which the artist closely observes and annotates through painterly interventions and elements. Changes and additions that are nearly impossible to notice at first glance invite the viewer to slow down and view and experience the space unexpectedly.

The apparent simplicity of this exhibition involves an intensive thought and making process in and with the spaces of M. The removal of the temporary exhibition architecture restores spatial connections and vistas, while patterns and material motifs bring in the story of the museum building.

Precise additions and interventions invite us to look at the corners, edges, folds, tops and bottoms of the exhibition space. These spatial figures encourage us to assess imperfections in the space in a different way.

Here at M, Smolders combines for the first time a new spatial intervention with residues from past site-specific exhibitions. She uses those residues as her own spatial alphabet to read and scale M-spaces. That spatial alphabet includes references to architectural elements such as doors, windows or floors, as well as references to the space of speech, such as punctuation and punctuation marks. ‘Un Signe’ (2022) in 2.B is both a two-part print of a window and a nod to a hook and a dot, while ‘Concrete, Concrete’ (2018) in 2.A is both a floor taking the measure of the M space and a handmade painting of a tiled floor of another space.

This exhibition consists of two rooms (2.A and 2.B), on both sides of the roof terrace.