Fred Eerdekens

Opera Gallery Geneva

09 - 30 October 2026

Opera Gallery Geneva is pleased to present a new solo exhibition dedicated to Belgian artist Fred Eerdekens, marking his return to the gallery eight years after his first Geneva exhibition in 2018. Bringing together over twenty works, the exhibition explores the relationship between sculpture, language, light and perception.

Nothing in Eerdekens’ work is quite as it first appears. Lines of metal, folded forms and abstract constructions gradually reveal words and phrases through shadow or from a precise point of view. The origins of this approach date back to 1987, when the shadow cast by a fragment of twisted metal unexpectedly formed a letter. This chance discovery became the starting point for a distinctive practice in which physical form and immaterial projection are closely intertwined.

The exhibition reflects the breadth of this exploration. Wall-mounted and suspended works use projected light to cast words and phrases in shadow, while freestanding sculptures become legible only when viewed from a specific position. Behind this apparent simplicity lies remarkable precision, yet the technical complexity remains secondary to the experience itself. Eerdekens transforms words into a visual and spatial encounter, using concise and suggestive phrases that resist fixed interpretation and open instead onto association, memory and imagination.

His work reminds us that seeing and understanding are not quite the same thing. What becomes visible is not always fully resolved. The object is only the beginning; what follows depends on how we look.