You are here: home / Expositions / Back from Bengel (Antwerp)

Back from Bengel (Antwerp)

After the presentation in Munich, Peter Vermandere will be presenting his latest works in Galerie Zijsprong in Antwerp.

After first setting foot in the Bengel Factory in 2013 I knew I would come back. What an overwhelming place this is! It's like a trip with a time machine. Thousands of steel dies and machines are the silent witnesses of past times. The grand workshops are filed with machine parts and boxes and shelves full of samples. The air is filled with a mix of old dust and recent oil and even the light inside seems more mellow. I have been absorbing this atmosphere and it has stayed with me ever since. I am not much of a believer in ghosts and spirits but in a place like this it is not difficult to feel their presence. It is as though the people who worked here for the past century could show up every second to continue their work.

When being at work, there is a moment when my hands and brain become one. My thinking stops, there is only the material battling my will. I am in search of that particular moment in which I get to master the machine followed by the moment in which I can follow my intuition. The stones and metals at hand take over and guide me in the direction of how they need to be cut, shaped and combined. It’s wonderful when that happens.

Peter Vermandere will be presenting his latest works at the 'Galerie Zijsprong'.

from 15/04 until 01/05

Hope to see you soon.

Galerie Zijsprong
Mechelsesteenweg 119b
2018 Antwerpen

+32 486 75 94 70

Back from Bengel Brooche n°13
gold, silver & carnalian agate slice

The catalogue of the exhibition in the Jakob Bengel Stiftung can be found on the website of the Hochschule Trier.