Long structure, 2025, The grass is always greener on the other side, Courtrai, dimensions variable

This monumental installation is inspired by various forms of power play. Throughout history and in the present day, power is used and misused in countless ways. As an artist, you also hold a certain form of power when presenting a work in public space or within an exhibition context. With this six‑metre‑long steel structure on wheels, Seppe Bultynck was able to direct both casual passers‑by and professional figures from the art world to look at the work and at the historic Broeltoren, in a specific way and to move through the installation along a controlled path. The installation was repositioned daily and the concrete panels received a new configuration each time, allowing the work to exert a different form of power over the visitor every day. These continuous shifts altered the sightlines, the spatial experience and the visual balance of the piece, ensuring that the work never carried the same meaning or impact twice.
Both steel and concrete are materials that are abundantly present in our contemporary living environment. They shape architecture and the streetscape and therefore exert a certain power over all of us. Seppe Bultynck selected one specific example of a power dynamic between concrete and the human being as the starting point for this work.
The concrete panels, often used as garden fences by, in his view, conservative Flemings, embody a peculiar logic. Bultynck finds it absurd how the Fleming encloses himself precisely at the moment he wants to be outside; the less contact with the outside world, the better. It is as if people willingly submit to a certain form of authority, refusing to see anything that might change.
In this way, conservatism maintains its strength, Bultynck suggests, by keeping its eyes tightly shut to whatever is different.