March 8 to August 10, 2025
Peter Buggenhout (born in Dendermonde, Belgium, in 1963) is internationally known for sculptures in which he uses discarded materials to create expansive physical forms in space. The artist describes his sculptures as "abject things" — as objects that elude familiar cognitive connections and demand consideration from more than one vantage point. Peter Buggenhout will show large-scale objects from various groups of work in two exhibition halls and outside in Waldfrieden Sculpture Park.
The sculptures of Peter Buggenhout — who was born in Dendermonde, Belgium, in 1963, and lives and works in Ghent — are made from things that have been robbed of their original purpose because they are no longer used: detritus and artifacts alike form the matter that the artist uses in his work and with which he assembles his objects. Thrown away plastic foil, tarps, woven fabrics, newspapers, scrap metal, pieces of wood; or organic substances like cow intestines, horsehair and dust all become part of his work. Buggenhout creates enormous objects from these discarded remnants — creation and decay inherent in their immediate material presence and rugged form.
For several years now Buggenhout, who turned his back on painting in 1990 to concentrate on sculpture, has been making series of works with different material focuses and titles. The found, the cyclical and the transient are key themes that Buggenhout articulates in these groups, each a diverse sculptural inventory. His sculptures have no single orientation, the many perspectives from which they can be viewed are as essential to their meaning as the equivalence and simultaneity of their elements — with the discarded always being an important basis component of his work.