Pas d’histoire, Pas d’histoire (No Story, No History) was the first large solo exhibition of Joëlle Tuerlinckx.
In her works, Belgian artist Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958) experiments with pieces of paper, paper snippets, paper balls, confetti and colored plasticine, placing them on her studio floor and observing how they react to light, crumble, disintegrate, expand, and shrink. Tuerlinckx describes the result of these experiments as suppositions of form or tangible thought.
In Pas d’histoire, Pas d’histoire, Tuerlinckx presented works created for the spaces of Witte de With. Her work, typically based on a combination rather than organization of forms, emphasizes the inherent potential of elementary substances. Tuerlinckx prefers to work on the floor as one might use a piece of paper to make a drawing: “When I draw a line on a piece of paper I can not delay the moment in order to make each point the result of a well-defined choice. Using materials like plasticine or pieces of confetti placed next to one another halts the evolution of a form because it crystallizes within a decelerated time frame, like film where choice occurs twenty-four times a second.”
In her work at Witte de With the perception of space was inextricably bound to the perception of time, which was inherent in her choice and manner of presenting poor or found artificial and organic materials. Some of her objects, scraps and bits of everyday materials, were wrapped or locked up in showcases or jars, while others were literally left open and bare, shredded in the space. In some cases her works were merely projected or described, existing only as vague contours or as an inventory of ideas. No matter their presentation, Tuerlinckx’s installations and objects confirmed the principles of abstraction and proved themselves a pure form of beauty.