Yvonne Dröge Wendel, 'To Be To Gather', 2022
City center The Hague: Spui (opposite City Hall)
Unveiled: Wednesday 22 June 2022, 17:00
Location sculpture: Spui, The Hague (opposite City Hall)
The artwork was unveiled with a number of special encounters. >> Watch the highlights on Vimeo and photos on the website
The exhibition title - To Be To Gather
- refers to both a gathering place and a state of mind. The work has a
tubular structure - it is hollow on the inside - and invites you to
insert your arms and head. After doing so, whatever you see or
experience actually differs from one person to the next. You may feel
like breaking out into song, or listening to the sounds of the city. Or
you may decide it's a perfect setting for a private conversation. It's
all up to you, the visitor.
This fascination with how we relate to objects runs like a thread through Dröge Wendel's body of work. "For
me, making a physical object is basically a search to find the right
conditions for recording and transforming different approaches to
communicating with, feeling and relating with objects. As such, it is a
quest to understand material as an active component of our social
fabric," explains the artist.
Yvonne
Dröge Wendel is an alumnus of Amsterdam's Gerrit Rietveld Academy and
residency programs at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam and
the Delfina Foundation in London. She currently works as head of Gerrit
Rietveld Academy's Fine Arts department. In 1994, Dröge Wendel was
awarded second prize in the Fine Arts and Theatre category of the Prix
de Rome. In 2016, she won the Dr. A.H. Heineken Award for Art, the
foremost fine arts prize in the Netherlands. The jury lauded Yvonne
Dröge Wendel's work for its originality, inventiveness and vitality. She
regularly contributes to exhibitions and projects at locations in the
Netherlands and abroad, including Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Tai
Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven; Schunck
Glaspaleis, Heerlen; Kunsthal Rotterdam; Sonsbeek Arnhem; Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam; Liverpool Biennial; National Museum of Kenya,
Nairobi.
The work To Be To Gather
is made possible in part thanks to the efforts of René Welker, Nina
Rave, the Kemner bronze foundry in Cuijk, JC Straaltechniek Werkendam BV
and the support of the City of The Hague.
- 22 Jun '22