Daniel Turner / Compresseur
Daniel Turner, born in 1983 and based in New York, has spent the past decade of his career focused on salvaging infrastructures. From selected sites, Turner extracts materials, fixtures, and remnants left behind by former occupants, which he then transforms to evoke the "spirit of the place." For his first museum exhibition in Belgium, Turner has chosen an especially evocative site: the former prison in the Brussels municipality of Forest.
Following its closure in 2022, Turner extensively documented the prison, conducted field recordings, and removed various materials that resonated with the impressions evoked by the carceral environment. Objects of utility sourced from the prison—such as foam sleeping pads, door handles, curtains, and fluorescent bulbs—have been chemically or mechanically processed to varying degrees. Iron radiators, once vectors of energy and sources of heat, were melted down and milled into solid, minimal forms.
Turner's work invites the viewer to consider how environments shape our experiences. Through material distillations that transpose both place and materiality, Turner evokes psychological responses with a stark economy of means.
