With the title of this installation, Aglaia Konrad challenges us to keep revisiting historiography as an inclusive narrative. Her work unfolds as a hotbed of ideas from male as well as female thinkers who were actively involved in the development of housing typologies in the interwar period. PREFAB represents modernist architecture and the utopia of social housing in the 20th century, but it also highlights the invisible power and influence of the female hand within this evolution in a world of progress, as architect, artist, researcher or designer. The subtitle of the installation (which takes the form of a small-scale and pragmatic yet aesthetic kitchen environment) is quite appropriate: Frankfurter Küche stands also for women in kitchens, but great chefs are men.

‘In Between Spaces’ zooms out from PREFAB on innovative avant-garde artists from the 20th century to today. Together, they build a utopian modern city, each from their critical perspective and ideals, within the safe in-between world presented here.

A modern city buzzes, and is characterised by speed, progress and dynamism. The zeitgeist of futurism encourages modernists to think about the design and layout of an environment focused on the pursuit of progress.

Ideals become tangible in the construction of metropolises. Iconic to modern society is the skyscraper. Luc Peire draws inspiration from it in his light towers, it is also central to Edmond Van Dooren’s The Modern City.

Interior design also follows the spirit of ‘Community Art’, of the Frankfurter Küche.

In PREFAB, Aglaia Konrad kaleidoscopically zooms in on modernist thinking that developed internationally during the interwar period. PREFAB represents 20th-century experimentation during the Interwar period, driven by progress and innovation, ideas and ideals to create a better, more liveable world. Classic, conservative values are turned into a tabula rasa. But it also represents a frame of mind that turned out to be largely utopian. The artwork reflects an in-between world in which we keep searching, amidst lightning-fast changes, between tradition and experimentation, between materiality and the intangible.

Artists look for ways to make their ideas tangible in a poetic way, or they challenge the idea of ‘tangibility’ and fixed forms. Some become melancholic from the hidden folklore, others long for enlightenment of the soul. We find ourselves in an in-between world with artworks that play with light, movement, time, colour or sound, floating between the tangible and the invisible.

For PREFAB, Aglaia Konrad drew inspiration from the Frankfurt Küche designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in 1926. The 1920s were the ideal breeding ground for new modernist ideas in art. Disillusionment after World War I united idealistic artists searching for a radically different way of depicting reality. A tabula rasa with tradition, existing frames fell away, the figurative and pure representation give way to abstraction, to the pure essence. Abstraction provided a break in style and absolute renewal, with, moreover, a resolute social commitment, also visible in the sophisticated democratising Frankfurt Küche. In this exhibition, we look beyond abstraction and explore the artists’ underlying motive or narrative.

The realisation of Frankfurter Küche was embedded in a broader utopian frame of mind around social housing and a strong belief in improving the living conditions of working people. In PREFAB, this is visualised through photographs, sketches, furniture pieces, videos, drawings and other architectural and visual references.

A giant mushroom makes us reflect on the complexity of things. Modernism stood for progress and efficiency in society, and in this sense, it acquired an aura of matter-of-factness and rationality, averse to imagination. However, there is no reality without an openness to an inherent surreality. A perception of the world is only complete if it allows a place for the ‘incongruous’, for dreams, for imagination.

The artworks assembled here were conceived from the medium of photography. Photography played a role in the creation of the images. At the same time, this is an ensemble that, like PREFAB by Konrad, addresses a number of (clashing) voices that talk about the position of women in our image-making.

Aglaia Konrad is a strong woman and, in this exhibition, also symbolises emancipatory and feminist thinking, in many ways. The woman in art, from archetype to matriarch, from artist to activist, from muse to madonna, from model to a girl who must stand her ground in #metoo context.

Philip Aguirre y Otegui, Guy Baekelmans, Sammy Baloji, Bram Bogart, Kasper Bosmans, Jean Brusselmans, Jan Burssens, Pol Bury, Jacques Charlier, Vaast Colson, Amédée Cortier, Jan Cox, Felix De Boeck, Antoon De Clerck, Paul Delvaux, Raoul De Keyser, Lili Dujourie, Marc Eemans, Jean-Jacques Gailliard, Jef Geys, Jane Graverol, Ann-Veronica Janssens, Paul Joostens, Aglaia Konrad, Jan Kiemeney, Hubert Malfait, Marcel Mariën, Ria Pacquée, Jozef Peeters, Luc Peire, Constant Permeke, Benoît Platéus, Emile Salkin, Jules Schmalzigaug, Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide), Victor Servranckx, Michel Seuphor (i.s.m. Piet Mondriaan), Léon Spilliaert, Georges Vantongerloo, Lotte Van den Audenaeren, Frits Van den Berghe, Edmond Van Dooren, Maarten Van den Eynde, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Edouard Van Steenbergen, Maxime Van de Woestyne, Jef Verheyen,  Ane Vester, Jozef Willaert