The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is detail of a photograph of The Concise History of Prehistoric Man, a 1996 installation by Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl. Through July 6, this mock natural-history diorama joins Bidet Museum, Lederhosen Museum, Disco Wine Bar, and other recent projects in the artist's solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium. Bijl also keeps good company; he is featured with Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, and other pillars of the contemporary aesthetic in Ad Absurdum, a group show on display through July 27 at the MARTa Herford Museum in Herford, Germany. His work is also on view at two Antwerp galleries, Galerie Annie Gentils and PocketRoom.

Born in 1946 in Antwerp, Bijl began his career as a self-taught painter and studied theatre and film at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf during the '60s. In 1979, at a gallery in his hometown, Bijl shared his first installation: a "driving school" accompanied by a manifesto calling for the abolition of art schools. Throughout the next decade, he focused on reproducing institutional and quotidian establishments, designing a fake billiards room, a laundromat, a hospital, a fallout shelter, and even a gallery show of American artists. He participated in the 1988 Venice Biennale, documenta IX, and skulptur projekte münster 07. Living and working in both Antwerp and Münster, Bijl is also a professor of sculpture at Kunstakademie Münster. He is represented by Galerie Annie Gentils and has participated in group shows the world over.

Bijl specializes in contextualizing unexpected fragments of reality in museum and gallery spaces and outdoors. His works are, in a sense, gigantic readymades — conceptual reflections on society and its absurdities. For skulptur projekte münster, Bijl produced Archaeological Site (A Sorry Installation), a massive, square-shaped pit containing a shingle-roofed spire, topped with a weathercock, as if Bijl had excavated a forgotten sanctuary amidst the spires swarming Münster. Recently planted grass grew to the edge of the pit, and spray-applied concrete mimicked geological layers. With wit rivaling Duchamp, Magritte, and Broodthaers, Bijl creates installations that are big jokes with poignant undertones. - Lauren McKee