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Camiel Van Breedam, one of the most important representatives of assemblage art (environments, collages, boxes, sculptures, objects…) in Belgium, has been creating work for almost 60 years now. Starting with his earliest works in 1956, Van Breedam used miscellaneous discarded materials set against (encrusted into) a background of roughly applied and tainted filler. Then his style moved slowly away from a rather abstract influence towards a gripping, crowded way of expressing his passionate preoccupation with the essential issues that began to overwhelm society as well as the individual in the seventies and the eighties: pollution, bureaucracy, oppression of minorities, mediocrity. During that period Camiel Van Breedam manifested his opinions artistically in an unbridled, extrovert way. In essence his art remains anthropomorphic and humanistic: the mysteries of the human condition in stressful situations hold him under a never-ending spell. The number 7 recently manifesting itself as a new source of inspiration, the artist created a frame of reference that offers structural guidance. 7 – Petit Musée, the work he made for Museum to Scale 1/7, is showing the essence of his oeuvre: on the left side 7 sculptures in Corten steel, in the back 7 assemblages and in the front area 7 objects: an environment in its own right.
