Meridiaan ·
The wharf show that refuses to explain itself
Kaasjager makes the case that the most interesting thing at Borry Noord this summer is a decision about how much a gallery is obliged to tell you.
Writing for the Saturday culture section of Meridiaan, Steven Kaasjager reviews GROUNDWORK and reads it primarily as an institutional gesture.
His argument is that a gallery declining to supply a theme is now unusual enough to be a position, and that the exhibition is stronger for it. He is particularly good on Bahri’s The Fold Remembers, and on the decision to hang it from the points where it was bound, which he calls the only honest piece of installation in a summer full of dishonest ones.
He is critical of the hall itself, which he thinks flatters weak work and defeats small work, and he notes that the gallery has now programmed four summers in it without solving that problem.
The full review appeared on 11 July 2026.