04.04.2025
The Musicologists & Maison Caca
Medusa is a nomadic, Brussels-based collective that supports artistic exchange platforming new emerging artists.
Medusa is currently run by Tim Evers, Saskia Smith, Egon Moles Le Bailly & Lisa De Meyer.
Anna De Wandeler is their legal advisor.
Medusa was founded by Sacha Verleyen & Noa Verkeyn.
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REGISTERED OFFICE Medusa Offspace VZW Michel Zwabstraat 20 (7) 1080 Sint-Jans-Molenbeek registration number 0787.962.276 RPR Brussel
Website ©Saskia Smith
The Future in a Fossil
08.12–15.01.23
group show
at Medusa’s (former) space, Brussels
Barbara Leclercq
Daan Peeters
Isaac Lythgoe
Jonas Dehnen
Raphaëlle Bertran
Orson Oxo Van Beek & Quinten Mestdagh
Prune
Timo Correwyn
Tristan Gac
The exposition is a fossil—an imprint of a movement petrified by nature in which the works claim their space with deafening serenity like abandoned ruins in a landscape. Fossils are phenomenon linked to the past, but they equally function oxymoronic, immortalising phenomena from the future. Fossils contain a timelessness in which past and present are intercepted, halting the progression of linear chronology, whilst containing traces for times to come. The artworks in this exhibition thus reflect—in their own way—the fossils of the future.
The ‘Ornamentum’ chair (2020) belongs to a series of furniture by spatial designer Orson van Beek and fashion designer Quinten Mestdagh. Both fascinated by the ornamental and decorative nature of historical furniture, Orson and Quinten questioned why there is an absence of this in contemporary design.
The ‘Ornamentum’ chair translates typical historical aesthetics connected to baroque and rococo into graphic icons performing as the framework of the chair. Saturated by the symbolic-natured decorative excess, ‘Ornamentum’ confuses the border between aesthetics and functionality to a point where the purpose of furniture becomes an ornament in itself.