Hugo Roelandt

Held in the fringes of the official programme of Documenta 6 in Kassel, 1977

In Kassel, Hugo Roelandt initially planned to stage the group perfomance The 4 Seasons in collaboration with Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Jan Janssen and Narcisse Tordoir. The action, which had been performed in Brussels earlier that year, aimed to explore artificial and scientific manipulation of the seasons. However, due to differing artistic viewpoints, the other performers withdrew from the project. As an alternative, Roelandt presented a solo performance in which he placed his feet in a cardboard box, filled it with fresh plaster, bound himself with a rope and covered himself with a camouflage net. With this act, Roelandt symbolically addressed the  artist’s plight within the art world, highlighting the constraints and compromises often imposed on creative expression.

First expression of the discontent of the performer with the way the performance medium was being used. Hugo Roelandt reacts artistically to the split of the group Janssen-Roelandt-Tordoir in the following way: ‘Hugo Roelandt did a remarkable solo performance at the documenta. Troubled by all the small and big problems that accompanied the realisation of his originally planned performance, he got a new idea: he stuck both feet in a cardboard box and buried them under a layer of fresh concrete [plaster], tied himself up with a strong rope and got himself entangled in a green camouflage net. In this way Roelandt wanted to call attention to his “restrained” position as an artist and to the impossibility of performing his original project. Art is not just a matter of ability; it is also a matter of possibilities.”
– Roger D’Hondt, ‘From Belgium’, Flash Art nos. 86/87, January 1979, p. 50

(Abstracts from Hugo Roelandt: Let's Expand The Sky, red. Mark Holthof, Occasional Papers, London, 2016)