25/08/2026
Timo Demollin | Structural Tension
Timo Demollin often works with things that have already been put to work, recasting the social relations they carry.
For 20368-20369-20370-20371-23222, however, the material enters the work before ever having served its intended purpose. Demollin acquired an unused 1995 stock of silver-plated wire links made for repairing broken copper wires in telephone cables. A box of links is spilled out onto the exhibition floor, forming a loose field of shimmering metal. Its boundaries remain unfixed: as visitors move through the space and step onto the work, the wire links gradually shift, scatter and gather.
The work’s title, itself a scatter of numbers, strings together the file numbers of successive parliamentary bills through which the Dutch state postal and telecommunications service was reorganised and privatised during the 1980s and 90s. In 1995, the Dutch state lost its position as majority shareholder, further loosening the company’s ties to direct state control.
Within Mounting Tension, Demollin’s work brings material and structural forms of tension together. Social and economic transformations become embedded in physical material, while the sculpture itself remains subject to external forces, shifting as people move through and encounter it.
Mounting Tension
4 September – 11 October 2026
Ontsteking, Ghent
20368-20369-20370-20371-23222, 2021
Emptied box of silver-plated cable wire links from 1995 stock
Dimensions variable and adjustable by the public
