A Friendly Takeover

DELTA AT MIMA

A monumental and playful installation spread over 3 floors, crosses 20 years of work, from the street to the museum, by Boris Tellegen aka Delta aka the friendliest graffitti artist we know, the “Dutch Master” of graffiti.

« A Friendly Takeover » by Boris Tellegen aka Delta
An exhibition curated in collaboration with Daniel Hofstede

at MIMA Brussels.

Free Admission
Exhibition: 03.02 > 28.05.2017

For this new MIMA exhibition dedicated to Tellegen, the various sculptures/installations spread over three floors, do not offer a chronological narrative of the work, but rather an impressionistic portrait. The works scattered through the installation are associated freely.

Boris Tellegen designs gigantic sculptural installations that are both aesthetic and functional. The walls remain untouched; everything happens in the centre of the room where the imposing sculpture plays with space. The sculpture has as much value as it stand as for the past works it amalgamates, sometimes even superimposed one on the other. Studio works are displayed, along with graffiti archives, a video game and artefacts of all kinds of collaborations with architects, a music label, and even brands of trainers, clothes, speakers, tiles, etc. This constellation of experiences underscores the artist's need to extend the creative field and reach out to different communities. It also highlights a desire to be part of society itself, without the filter of the confined spaces of art and its market.

Visitors strolling among, under or over the installations, will be drawn to different details and come up with their own image of Tellegen's work. Will children be more interested in clambering over the huge robot lying on the floor of the second floor,nonchalantly letting its legs out of the building through the windows? Will graffiti artists be more attracted to the little train that runs through the body of this robot? Will the archaeologist succeed in discovering what is hidden in the thickness of the sculpture? Like DELTA/Tellegen’s haphazard career, visitors are treated to a host of fun and aesthetic sensations and do not only find themselves facing a work, but living it.