Ief Spincemaille
Ief Spincemaille (born 1976) obtained his master's degree in philosophy from KU Leuven and studied jazz, modern music, and technology at L’Aula de musica in Barcelona. After his studies, he created his first artwork as a self-taught artist in 2006: “Is the great bear a lonely bear”. Since then, he has been active as a visual artist, designer, and set designer.
(The decline of) the principium individuationis
Spincemaille creates instruments, sculptures, and site-specific projects that explore the boundaries of perception and identity. His work includes both perception instruments that disrupt our gaze and alienate us from reality, as well as large sculptures that he brings into non-artistic contexts to question his own role as an artist. He is fascinated by the unfamiliar and the other, and the experience of uncertainty, depersonalisation, and alienation that these boundary experiences can evoke. Spincemaille explores these interstitial spaces in terms of perception, subjectivity, and matter.
During the KIKK Festival, he presents nine sculptures and perception instruments, both old and new (2009-2024), spread across three different spaces. Spincemaille explores the border areas between fiction and reality, matter and immateriality with both the individual works and the complete installation. References to sublime natural phenomena and psychopathological phenomena always linger in the background.
The title of the installation refers to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. The "principium individuationis" is an Apollonian principle that stands for limitation, clarity, and control. It provides distinction and gives something or someone its own identity and way of seeing. This is in contrast to the Dionysian principle, which is focused on merging with the other and letting go of one's own identity.