Guillaume Bijl (b. 1946, Belgium) lives and works in Antwerp. He has been testing the relationship between art and consumer society since 1979, when he made his Art Liquidation Project in a gallery-space in Antwerp. This work took the form of a mock government commissioned report in which he concluded that, in light of the proven uselessness of art, all areas devoted to the arts should be made suitable for more practical purposes. Since then, Bijl has been transforming museums and art galleries into fitness centers, lamp shops, carpet stores, travel agencies, driving schools, and so on. His imitations of spaces not traditionally associated with the arts are caught up in a perplexing interplay between fiction and reality. His work has been exhibited in various solo shows, including S.M.A.K., Gent (2008); Gallery COMA, Berlin (2009); Sculpture Trouvée, Ladendorf (2009); Cabin, Antwerpen (2010); Galerie Guy Pieters, Paris (2011), as well as various group exhibitions, among which The Fate of Irony, KAI 10, Düsseldorf (2010); Ludwig Museum, Köln (2010); The State of Things, Bozar/ Namoc, Brussels / Beijing (2010); ABC, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing (2010); Witte de With, Rotterdam (1990, 2011) and at Galery Christian Nagel Köln / Berlin (2011).