Belgian houses might well be ‘little castles’, but they speak volumes about our way of life. The scale of the houses and the parcelling of land can be interpreted, if so desired, as the law of the jungle; their infinite variety might signal a lack of collective vision or sense of community; their similarities might allude to the conditioned state of the inhabitants.

In the half-century since architect Renaat Braem published The Ugliest Country in the World (1968), his treatise on the urban planning chaos in Belgium, very little seems to have changed. How we live is still dominated by the typical impulse towards individuality. Despite all the radical rethinking by architects and urban planners, the classic, individual, privately-owned house still seems to be the building block from which our spatial ‘order’ is constructed. And is the lack of architectural and urban planning quality not caused by the ‘liberation’ of the Belgian housing market? It gives homeowners carte blanche to realize their dream houses, the majority of which are detached from their surroundings.”

Archive of Private Living does not strive to be a ‘manifesto’, but a representation of reality. The artist leaves it up to the viewer to judge. This series seeks to question and explore the ribbon housing that characterises Belgium, and to consider it from an anthropological and sociological perspective. The project’s title refers to the profusion and variety of contemporary housing. All the single-family homes that are presented are an expression of society and a testament to our bricks-and-mortar existence.

Every house has its own painting. The small-format canvases are all different sizes. On average, the dimensions range from 18 x 20 cm to 50 x 60 cm. Just as the houses each postulate their own individuality, no unity is sought in the approach. On the contrary, every canvas is an autonomous work, each time giving the freedom to experiment with different styles. The outcomes are as varied as the subjects themselves: there are photorealist works, ‘children’s drawings’, outsider art, and ‘Sunday paintings’. For isn’t it notoriously hard to draw the line between good and bad taste, or high and low culture, when it comes to art?

The Archive of Private Living is a long-running project that has been exhibited in various constellations and at different locations. On view here is the billboard poster for the solo exhibition in Ypres (2014).