On October 26th, Avee  presents the second iteration of a new body of work by Myrthe van der Mark, which coincides with the end of Daylight Saving Time and the finissage of Jonas Dehnen’s solo exhibition ‘A Legato or Your Perfect Hair In The Bathroom Sink, Adorning’, at Pizza Gallery in Ghent. This day also marks the beginning of winter time, when the clocks go back one hour, giving us an extra hour at night.

 

The work on view at Pizza Gallery dovetails with pieces the artist recently exhibited during the third edition of Publiek Park at Meise Botanic Garden. The transparent octagonal table, custom-made for her installation in the ornate octagonal Balat greenhouse, returns here. Originally, it served as a platform for four vessels containing different preparations (salve, soap, infusion, and watercolour ) made from St. John’s Wort. This herb, traditionally harvested around the summer solstice, also marks the birthday of the artist’s late father and coincided with the opening of Publiek Park.

 

The currently presented sculptures, cast in clear epoxy resin inside four of the same overstock Serax vases sourced from Rotor Deconstruction, take inspiration from shokuhin sampuru (食品サンプル), the hyperreal food models found in Japanese restaurant displays. Each contains a different flavour of Cup-a-Soup, that were left unconsumed after the passing of the artist's father. These urn-like vessels, that seem to mimic a human silhouette, act as containers for transformation: evoking preservation, transience, and the eternal. As the resin subtly expanded with temperature changes, the glass vases gradually cracked and bursted, the interior form pressing against its container until it broke free. In this moment, the sculptures shifted: from stillness to action, from vessel to ghost. A serene banquet of memento mori becomes a shrine to impermanence and energy’s continual recomposition.

 

Rooted in the anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner, van der Mark reached out to the Steiner school in Brussels, aptly located on Sint-Janskruidstraat (St. John’s Wort Street), to collaborate for Publiek Park. During the exhibition’s opening, children from the school sang solstice songs in several languages. Their recorded performance, titled Non nobis solum (“not for ourselves alone”), continued to echo through the greenhouse as the days grew shorter.

 

A new sound work, 1:12:36, loops within the current installation. It is a compilation of New Year’s Eve recordings from 1994, 1995, and 1996, captured on home video and edited by the artist’s cousin. Set within the industrial shell of a former soap factory, the audio conjures familial voices and domestic warmth, marking the symbolic transition from old year to new. In its repetition, the piece mirrors the cyclical nature of time and echoes the themes of transformation and memory throughout the installation.

 

The works on view revisit and reconfigure the earlier installation: preserving its structure while offering new reflections on dualities, day and night, summer and winter, life and death. Together, they form a holistic narrative of continuity and change. As memory, matter, and site shift, the installation becomes a meditation on flux, care, and the passage of time.

 

More information on the installation at Publiek Park on myrthevandermark.com