The Dog in the Dark
Richard Klapwijk
Antwerp
About
Richard Klapwijk is a Dutch artist based in Antwerp, working across theatre, performance, installation, film and text.
His practice begins with everyday life: with places, encounters, work, movement, conversations and the situations he finds himself in. From there, he builds temporary worlds in which things can be seen, felt and related to differently. These worlds are never fully fixed. They stay open to change, to interruption, and to the presence of others.
He works by bringing elements together: objects, images, gestures, structures, fragments of text, people, memories and sites. What matters is not only what these elements are on their own, but what happens when they are placed in relation. Meaning is not imposed beforehand. It emerges through contact, through timing, through the way a situation unfolds.
His work often moves between the intimate and the public, the humorous and the vulnerable, the makeshift and the theatrical. It can feel provisional, but it is never accidental. Each work is a way of testing how much openness a form can hold, and how much life can enter it.
Rather than making closed statements, Richard creates conditions. A theatreplay, a performance, an installation or a film becomes a space in which familiar roles loosen, and where other ways of being present can appear. The audience is not simply looking at the work from the outside, but becomes part of its unfolding. Nothing in his practice exists in isolation. Personal experience, collaboration, labor, fiction, site and audience are all active ingredients. This is why his work is less about presenting a finished world than about setting one in motion.
Project
The Dog in the Dark is a theatre show about a man who, beneath his studio in an abandoned crypt under a church in a historic Belgian city, finds an opening to another world. Inspired by Anton Koolhaas’ novel New Moon, he picks up his shovel and starts digging. His journey moves through resistance, exhaustion, memory and desire, personas appearing and disappearing along the way.
Once you enter the underground space, you are no longer just watching. You are inside.....and part of what happens.