The Way the Walls Come Together, 2024

Intervention in The Porous Lodge by Yoel Pytowski at Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp, Belgium

Curated by Zuzanna Rachowska

Programmed LED lamp, 120 x 4,5 x 3 cm​

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The Way The Walls Come Together is an ephemeral light installation that consists of one LED lamp on the ground floor of Yoel Pytowski's his solo exhibition The Porous Lodge at Kunsthal Extra City. The Porous Lodge is a culmination of years of ongoing exploration of architectural gestures as artistic expressions by Pytowski, where he created an installation that completely alters the space of the former Dominican chapel. In the exhibition, he explores architecture as a shifting space where human intelligences converge with the physical. The architectural elements unfold a sort of unknown, elemental, often embodied way of communication that plays with the spatiotemporality and universality of experience. To emphasize these qualities, Yoel Pytowski and curator Zuzanna Rachowska invited four visual artists and a choreographer to respond to the installation with their own artistic interventions throughout the duration of the exhibition: Amel Omar, Rosario Aninat, Nina Canell, Manon van den Eeden and Sandy Williams.​

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The Way The Walls Come Together by Manon van den Eeden was implemented on November 9, 2024. The work evokes the rhythm of human breath through subtle, stepped shifts that reveal themselves in the surrounding space. As the light modulates, it introduces delicate, almost imperceptible changes that transform the environment, casting a quiet resonance across the room.

 

'As I move through the room, I feel the walls closing in, each breath reverberating within me—a reminder of the tenuous relationship between my body and the space that encases it. With every shift of my weight, the air responds in quiet resonance, redefining not only my perception but also the very essence of my reality.

The walls seem to breathe with me, contracting and expanding, creating an intimate rhythm that envelops me. In this close proximity, I oscillate between acute awareness and profound disconnection, a delicate interplay that leaves me both grounded and untethered. I sense the whispers of those who have occupied these spaces before me, their stories lingering in the corners like dust motes suspended in light. Unease begins to settle within me, a tightening that pulls at my insides, as if I’m being drawn into the very walls themselves. My muscles tense, and I can feel a slight tremor in my hands—it’s difficult to resist the rising tide of tension. As my skin stretches further, the walls lean closer—each breath becomes a thread, weaving me deeper into the intricate fabric of this environment.'

Text by Manon van den Eeden​