With Catasterism, Giorgio Andreotta Calò (IT, 1979) transforms the Hedge House into a sensory-stimulating total installation of sculpture, light, and architecture. Calò approaches the pavilion designed by Wiel Arets as a living entity, an organic ecosystem in which his sculptures enter into a subtle relationship with each other, the architecture, and the history of the place.

The exhibition takes the relationship between Kasteel Wijlre estate and water as its starting point. Water is an element that both gives and destroys life, as the flooding of the Hedge House in 2021 made painfully clear. Calò makes subjects such as our relationship with nature and climate subtly tangible, in a ‘slow’ artistic practice in which the viewer is invited to a different experience of time and space. Calò’s installation transforms the Hedge House into an enigmatic underwater world, where traces of erosion are captured in bronze sculptures, mysterious shellfish grow on the walls, and mythological stories intertwine with organic processes.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Italy, 1979) lives and works in Venice. His sculptures and installations explore the relationship between landscape, time, and transformation, often from the perspective of water and geology. He was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and represented Italy at the Venice Biennale (2017).