Mysterious exhibition ‘Water’ is like a voyage of discovery through the polar region

There is a circle on the museum floor, unmistakably an Arctic Circle. Words are written on it, such as about the “crystal ringing” of melting ice “and the frozen distance.” Water is the name of the exhibition by the Frisian artist Tjibbe Hooghiemstra (1957) in Museum De Buitenplaats in Eelde. It would as well Ice can be called: the twenty large paintings depict ice cliffs and ice floes in the colors bright white, blue, ocher yellow, lead gray and ultramarine. We enter the ice-cold world of the Poles through paintings, color drawings, sketches and drawings in Japanese ink.

A text by Herman Melville from the novel Moby Dick (1851) tells of the hallucinatory confusion that seizes a person who spends a long time in the coldest regions of the earth: he experiences it as “the Black Sea in a midnight storm” or “a winter scene at the North Pole.”

Numerous smaller works have been hung around the crucial paintings, often sketching the icy wasteland. They are collages of various images in different sizes and made of various materials. Like a kind of cartoon or a sketchbook. In much of his work, also this time, Hooghiemstra uses old map and atlas sheets as a support for the drawings. For example, we see a chalk-white iceberg against a menacing black background drawn on a ‘Position Plotting Sheet’ from 1947. That is a beautiful image, the iceberg captured in coordinates.

Secrets

The exhibition actually tells the story of the British polar explorer Robert Scott who died in Antarctica in March 1912 during his second expedition. He and his team members arrived at the geographic South Pole in January of that year and found the tent of Norwegian Amundsen, who reached the same spot more than a month earlier, December 1911. The disillusionment was immense. The Norwegian flag fluttered proudly on the tent.

Drawings show, sometimes extremely stylized, the triangular shape of Amundsen’s pole tent as it was photographed and drawn by Scott’s team. Scott died in a tent of the same simple shape. In addition to the tent, each collage also features a drawn portrait of his wife, artist Kathleen Scott. Sometimes we see her in the black of mourning, then imprisoned behind bars.

It takes some time for the exhibition to reveal its secrets. The surprise that puts everything in perspective can be found on the first floor. There Hooghiemstra designed an installation with an empty table, chair, some very dark nightscapes and projected on the wall the farewell letter that Scott wrote to Kathleen, a poignant text face to face with imminent death in the ice. He addresses the letter to her as a “widow.” The small room in which this installation is located has sloping walls and ceiling, and therefore has something of the oppressive atmosphere of the tent in which the polar explorer spent his last days, surrounded by a violent snowstorm.

In Water different worlds come together: that of art, literature and of historical polar expeditions. The visitor receives an information bulletin with explanations and photos of Scott’s dramatic journey of discovery and of Kathleen. The portrait of Kathleen from 1907 is especially impressive: black hair, sharp dark gaze. Once you have tracked her down in the collages, you can even recognize her image in an almost abstract, black swirl of lines and scratches. Hooghiemstra works with mixed media, varying from ink, chalk, charcoal and pencil to acrylic paint on antique paper and linen.

The exhibition itself is like a journey of discovery. At first glance, the large paintings with the many icy colors attract attention, but gradually you discover the meaning of the smaller works. The mourning-black portraits of Kathleen. The lines that run across the nautical charts and seem to plot the routes. Or ice floes that are like white clouds and vice versa. They mirror each other. White, many shades of blue and black are the predominant colours. Hooghiemstra varies and repeats his themes, which gives an extra dimension: ice landscapes seem monotonous, but if you look closely, you can see nuances of yellow in the ultramarine. Icebergs can even be velvet black or black and blue. Suddenly you see a polar bear on several smaller works, with ‘North Pole’ written next to it. Scott could never have seen this animal, they don’t live in Antarctica. They are always drawn on an ice floe, and always alone. And they look lovely, with curves of the body. Symbols of melting ice and a disappearing polar world. This indicates Water a special, contemporary dimension.

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