Zeger Reyers (born in the Netherlands in 1966) has become famous for installations in which he covers spaces with mushrooms or fungi. He focuses on natural processes such as eating and being eaten, growing, flowering and decay. He allows fungi to grow out of furniture and appliances and sank chairs in the Oosterschelde (Eastern Scheldt), until they were overgrown with mussels.
Zeger Reyers’ work is not easy to read. It exudes a poetry that is reminiscent of the enthusiasm with which nature was studied in Victorian times. In the passionate way that Reyers grows mushrooms and collects recipes and facts, science and art are a logical extension of each other – just like in Western nineteenth-century society.
He worked on a presentation with several works for the Middelheim Museum in and around the Braem Pavilion. Once again, the transition between coming into being and decay were central. Furthermore, Reyers confronted the pavilion’s biomorphic architecture and the visual language of the architect Renaat Braem (who will be celebrated in honour of his 100th birthday (www.braem2010.be, only in Dutch).
The Pavilion exhibition opened on 31 October at the Middelheim Museum. Dutch artist Zeger Reyers upsets the seasons in two natural installations in and around the Braem Pavilion. Given that nature is rather unpredictable, it took a while before the installations achieved the form the artist had envisaged and a white carpet of mushrooms could be admired.