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Sandcastles and Rubbish is the title of this new publication, which is in fact an artist’s book. The publication isn’t a catalogue, but a well-planned, printed exhibition in the shape of a book. The book as mobile space: a book that eludes supporting walls and offers a potential public the chance to introduce art into the home without having to move to some other place. This book should be considered a distant relative of the ephemeral exhibitions Seth Siegelaub made at the end of the 1960s. The legendary New York art dealer found a way out of the then prevailing dematerialization process of art, which during the revolutionary 1960s ensued from the general, harsh and fundamental criticism of the work of art as a commodity on the free market. The title Sandcastles and Rubbish is a direct reference to the place where these images were created/came to a standstill: on derelict industrial sites where the archaeological remains continue to disintegrate due to indifference, decay and strategic considerations of estate agents. Paradoxically, in this decline of industrial buildings, there’s beauty and poetry—which has nothing to do with nostalgia or lending an ear to jubilant cries about a distant socioeconomic past. These remains of industrial archaeology are transformed by Vanoverberghe into an aestheticizing visual language, which set in black and white is not the subject of nostalgia, but refers to a concrete reality. Time and again, the reality of time produces innovation, generates industrial and human outsourcing, and here and there it presents in a cultural-tourist setting traces of ‘conserved decay’ that have been turned into ‘museum items’. Vanoverberghe contributes to a specific approach of the concept ‘archive’. He shows ‘what’ remains intact and visualizes it as a fluid collection of ‘that’ which before long won’t be there any longer. Dust, sand and other matter cover the industrial production that has ground to a halt. Dust is the patina of time under which the standstill transforms into a ‘sublime’ deviant of a monument. The Dutch artist Jan Dibbets acquainted me with the photography of Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966), who with his extreme close-ups of for example industrial landscapes is considered a pioneer of the Neue Sachlichkeit. From a historical perspective, Vanoverberghe is indebted to Renger-Patzsch, which finally brings us to a joint work by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Élevage de poussière (1920). Man Ray photographed Duchamp’s Large Glass after it was covered with dust. Made using a long exposure time, the photograph conveys the effect of an aerial view of a desertscape. The photograph was published in a Dada journal in 1922, with a remarkable caption by Duchamp: View taken from an aeroplane by Man Ray. Outtake from a text written by Luk Lambrecht