Ghostly presence: Phantom art takes over museum in Belgium

Kortrijk, Belgium – London studio Glithero took over a gallery at the Broelmuseum, replacing the classic collection of sculptures with holographic versions of them for the International Biennale Interieur 2014 interior design show.

Although it appeared that Glithero had removed the works from the gallery altogether for the exhibition, entitled Fantoom – Phantom in English – in fact the studio used a trick better suited to haunted houses and magic tricks: the Pepper’s Ghost illusion. In the illusion, the magician, or in this case the designers, used plate glass and special lighting to make an object appear and disappear. In reality, the object was lying below the display in a box, and is reflected onto the glass above.

The work invites visitors to consider the permanence of museum collections. Often we think of them as always there, but museum collections are often switched and replaced, with works of arts moving to other institutions or into storage. ‘Fantoom is about perception and transience,’ says the studio on its website. ‘Think about the discoloured imprint on wallpaper when a painting has been taken off the wall. When an object that has been in our presence for a very long time is gone, it feels as if some of the object’s virtues remain in place.’ It is a thoughtful way of using illusion and technology to shed new light on museums. 

For more on how museums and artists are collaborating to introduce a new twist to old collections, see our Seed on Studio Droog’s imagining of works in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.