Freeze - Concrete Thoughts

The last weekend of It Never Ends is also the last chance to visit the five floors of the former showroom of the Citroën garage. Especially for this occasion, Nick Steur will be creating a new and profoundly fragile installation made from rubble. During the first renovation phase at KANAL, he collected fragments of masonry that had formed part of the building's structure. He uses them to build a new installation of meticulously balanced sculptures of discarded concrete. Steur concentrates on creating a transient equilibrium out of the obsolete, discarded material and, for a brief moment, breathes new life into it. With captivating precision, he constructs an intimate relationship between architecture and time. By focusing on the carefully balanced material and its reflections in the water (the object of his experimentations at KANAL), he invites us to pause for a moment, or at least to enter a space where time seems to do just that.

"Freeze: To become motionless or immobile, as from surprise or attentiveness. To become unable to act or speak, to stop motion. To stop progress. To preserve. When we stop motion, we preserve. When we stop, everything else seems to move at a faster rate around us. When I concentrate on a rock, everything else can disappear. I can be truly there, see its sharpness, feel its weight. I can feel its tipping point and admire its stillness. We can never be as silent. I can imagine this rock sees more than I ever can, for it is mostly motionless. It could experience this world. I cannot enter its door. I cannot go inside. The rock doesn't experience an inside or outside, and therefore it does not really need a door. It doesn't need to exclude me. I can turn it around, observe it from all angles and imagine the centre of gravity, imagine all the theoretical lines running through its heart – I mean, its centre. We can make a stone touch another stone. We can throw it in the ocean. The water makes room for the stone and the stone doesn't need to fight for that space. I can imagine that after thousands of years it will have eroded into thousands of sand grains. Even then, those grains have no doors and this idea saddens me. I admire the rock. I admire it for having no wish, no need for recognition or possession and no need for doors. I imagine it doesn't know anything about any limits. I wish I didn't know  anything about any limits. I wish I could become motionless. I wish I could freeze." Nick Steur