Following on from his work in the 1970s and the Casual Passer-by series, which placed anonymous passers-by at the centre of his work, Braco Dimitrijević had the name ‘Gerda Bollen' affixed to the pediment of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; in 1975, she was to become a famous Casual Passer-by in Brussels' public spaces (see image 6 (Palais des Beaux-Arts 1975) in the slider).

Almost 20 years later, Parc Event / P.P. Rubens – Gerda Bollen presents a hypothetical and mysterious encounter between Gerda Bollen and Pierre-Paul Rubens, the illustrious Flemish painter. On a bench in the Parc Royal in Brussels, a stone's throw from the Palais des Beaux-Arts (now known as Bozar) and the Palais Royal, the artist had two copper plates engraved with their names affixed to the bench and asked an anonymous passer-by emerging from the Palais Royal to sit on that very bench, thus making him a witness to this encounter between the famous man and the anonymous woman, who, in this installation, takes on the aura of a pivotal figure in history. 

Parc Event / P.P. Rubens – Gerda Bollen consists of a slipcase mounted with paper and lined on the inside with red silk. It contains two copper plates bearing the name of the artist, P.P. Rubens, and that of the passer-by, Gerda Bollen. Inside the upper part of the slipcase, a black-and-white photograph* is tucked into the silk lining. It shows an elderly man — the unknown passer-by — sitting on a bench in the Parc Royal in Brussels. On the bench, the two copper plates can be seen, as a reminder of the presence of P.P. Rubens and Gerda Bollen, who are gathered there for a fictional event whose circumstances remain a mystery to this day.

*Photograph of the unknown passer-by by Philippe de Gobert.