Interventions

Three artist interventions punctuate ‘The Collection One’

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is punctuating its new display The Collection One with three exciting interventions by Andro Wekua, Marieke van Diemen and Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger.

The museum is giving contemporary art a prominent place in its new displays in the form of three artist’s presentations that reflect upon the collection and the building. These visual statements are intensified through alternation with works from the permanent collection, establishing a dialogue that heightens the senses and encourages contemplation. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has an active programme of exhibiting and responding to leading international artists. The interventions by Andro Wekua and Steiner & Lenzlinger have been realised in association with H&F Patronage.

Intervention #1 Marieke van Diemen. Vases

Since 1930 the German ceramics industry has produced vast quantities of vases in an endless range of sizes, forms and colours. For the export market they were stamped ‘West Germany’. Marieke van Diemen began to consider a new framework for displaying and interpreting these popular, typical mass-produced items, which have so many nostalgic associations. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has invited Van Diemen to design an installation in which a vast collection of West Germany vases is presented as a large autonomous work of art. How can an everyday product become a desirable object? Marieke Van Diemen’s installation gives optimal expression to the vases’ serial production and the minimal differences in their colour and detailing. Implicit within this exhibition is Van Diemen’s belief that the manner in which objects are displayed has a decisive influence on our perception and evaluation of them.

Intervention #2 Andro Wekua. Wait to Wait

Andro Wekua has developed a new installation specially for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. A contemporary intervention with an almost classical atmosphere, it occupies a pivotal position in the new hang of the old master’s collection. A boyish figure rocks on a rocking chair, mysteriously concealed behind the coloured glass of an enormous display case. Collages add to the work’s classical, dreamy and mysterious character. Wekua was born in Sochumi, Georgia in 1977. For several years he has lived and worked in Zurich. His work comprises paintings, drawings and collages. He has also recently begun to make sculptures, videos and installations. Wekua’s ‘Wait to Wait’ has been realised under the auspices of the H+F Patronage and has been acquired for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s permanent collection. Works by Andro Wekua have recently been acquired by museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Intervention #3 Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger. Four Vegetative Sleeping Rooms

The Swiss artists Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger are interested in artificial gardens, natural growth processes and all cross-overs between nature and culture. During the 2003 Venice Biennale in the Roman Catholic church of San Stae on the Grand Canal, thousands of leaves and plants fluttered on branches from the ceiling. Visitors were able to lie on a large bed from which they could behold this miracle above. Under the auspices of the H+F Patronage, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has invited Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger to create a new vegetative installation in the museum’s four so-called ‘four-leaf clover’ galleries. The intimate window front showcases play host to a bone tree, a jungle, a seed room and a pink crystal forest growing from urea. Visitors may enter and experience each of the rooms, from which emanates a sense of wellbeing and peace that transcends life and death and that removes you from the museum’s busy reality, which passes by like a film.

Intervention #1
Marieke van Diemen. Vases

Intervention #2
Andro Wekua. Wait to Wait

Intervention #3
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger. Four Vegetative Sleeping Rooms