Lodewijk Heylen

Lodewijk Heylen (°1989) lives and works in Antwerp. He is a conceptual and contextual artist, fascinated by the human urge to imitate, augment or harness the forces of nature. In his work he relates to industrial and infrastructural traces, transformations and concepts within a post-industrial society. Using pre-existing materials, standards and formats, he builds large-scale installations or conducts performances that transpose between the natural and the artificial. Rather than claiming the space, the work's material presence dissolves into its context and questions its own existence.

As an artistic researcher at University of Hasselt and as a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at KULeuven in Ghent, Heylen studied the impact of (digital) technology and industrialization on society and the future of the artist and designer. He is also an alumnus of the Belgian Young Academy for Science and Art and founder of the artistic think tank BIN.

Heylen was a student at the atelier of Espace Urbain (Arts in the Public Domain) at La Cambre in Brussels and the Institute für Kunst im Kontext in Berlin, and graduated in 2014. He obtained his PhD in the Arts on the subject of ‘the role of the artist in an automated future’ at PXL-MAD School of Arts and the University of Hasselt in 2021. He was a resident at the Verbeke Foundation, AIR Antwerp, Artistes en Résidence Clermont-Ferrand and ACC Galerie Weimar and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Belgium, France, Germany, Norway and The Netherlands. 

Next to his practice as an artist and a researcher, he organizes, initiates and curates exhibitions, workshops and public art projects. In 2015, he coordinated a temporary artist-run space and shared studio in Turnhout (Belgium) called BIN Turnhout, presenting young locals together with internationally renowned artists. Since 2023, he is responsible for the visual arts program of Dingen Die Niet Verkopen, an art space in the heart of Antwerp focussed on unfinished or ephemeral work and the work of recently graduated artists.