Daniel Turner takes an abandoned prison in Brussels as the basis for his exhibition at the MACS - his first ever institutional exhibition in Belgium

The MACS in Grand-Hornu, Belgium, is organising the first museum exhibition in Belgium of American artist Daniel Turner.

Daniel Turner, born in 1983 and based in New York, has spent the past decade of his career focused on salvaging infrastructures. From selected sites, Turner extracts materials, fixtures, and remnants left behind by former occupants, which he then transforms to evoke the «spirit of the place.» For his first museum exhibition in Belgium, Turner has chosen an especially evocative site: the former prison in the Brussels municipality of Forest.

Following its closure in 2022, Turner extensively documented the prison, conducted field recordings, and removed various materials that resonated with the impressions evoked by the carceral environment. Objects of utility sourced from the prison—such as foam sleeping pads, door handles, curtains, and fluorescent bulbs—have been chemically or mechanically processed to varying degrees. Iron radiators, once vectors of energy and sources of heat, were melted down and milled into solid, minimal forms.

Turner’s work invites the viewer to consider how environments shape our experiences. Through material distillations that transpose both place and materiality, Turner evokes psychological responses with a stark economy of means.

‘‘The basis of my practice is archaeological. This idea of locating a site and then going into the site and mining the site. When I speak about that work in the process, I speak in terms of “mining” because in a sense, I’m working as an amateur miner: locating materials, digging for materials, extracting the materials.”
— Daniel Turner in conversation with Denis Gielen, New York, May 2024

Daniel Turner / Compresseur
15 December 2024 - 6 April 2025
MACS
Site du Grand-Hornu
Rue Sainte-Louise, 82 B-7301 Hornu

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MACS_Daniel Turner_PR-EN.pdf

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Installation view of the exhibition (© Isabelle Arthuis)
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Images of the prison in Forest (© Daniel Turner)

Compresseur, détail, vidéo HD, 4 écrans, son, noir et blanc, 36’, en boucle, 2024. Photo : Daniel Turner

About Daniel Turner

Daniel Turner was born in 1983 in Portsmouth, Virginia and currently lives and works in New York (USA).

The artist has participated in institutional exhibitions including; The Chinati Foundation, Marfa Texas; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel Switzerland; Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Krefeld Germany; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle Belgium; Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev Ukraine; Museen Haus Esters und Haus Lange, Krefeld Germany; Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun Switzerland, Palais de Tokyo, Paris France; Muzeul de Arta Cluj-Napoca, Cluj România; Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France; the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw Poland; Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck Austria; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo Japan; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris France; and The Maria Leuff Foundation in New York.

Turner’s works are held in private and public collections including; S.M.A.K. Ghent, Kunstmuseum Basel, Centre Pompidou, le FRAC Bretagne, ICA Miami, Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand-Hornu amongst others.

Daniel Turner Portrait. Photo credit: Aurélien Arbet

About the MACS

Established in the former Grand-Hornu colliery (an example of 19th century industrial archaeology listed as UNESCO world heritage), the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Museum of Contemporary Arts (MACS) is noted for the “genius of the place” which for over 20 years has inspired a number of internationally recognised artists, including Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Giuseppe Penone, Tony Oursler, Adel Abdessemed and Matt Mullican, to create specific projects here. As an engaged partner alongside the artists, the MACS supports the production of works in relation with specific places or contexts (LaToya Ruby Frazier, Fiona Tan, Daniel Turner...), and pays particular attention to the visual arts scene in Belgium through its monograph exhibitions (Aline Bouvy, Lionel Estève, Ariane Loze...).

Daniel Turner takes an abandoned prison in Brussels as the basis for his exhibition at the MACS - his first ever institutional exhibition in Belgium

MACS_Daniel Turner_PR-EN.pdf

PDF - 2.2 Mb

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