Museum De Buitenplaats in Eelde has been transformed into a ‘terra incognita’. The Frisian artist Tjibbe Hooghiemstra takes us along the route of polar explorers such as Robert Scott. A journey of discovery.
In his exhibition Water in Museum De Buitenplaats, Tjibbe Hooghiemstra (1957) takes us into the inhospitable loneliness. A journey about survival. But what does that have to do with art? Everything, we just have to experience it.
The discoverers of Antarctica, Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, went to the South Pole at the beginning of the last century. We learned it in school and were jealous. That was a tough life. Challenge and heroism.
Robert Scott kept a diary so we know exactly how his journey went. Along the frozen edges of madness and death, it turns out. In February 1912 he wrote a letter to ‘my widow’ from the South Pole: ‘It is minus 21 degrees, food and fuel are not enough and writing is not easy because of the cold’, we read.
As if the artist’s hand was stiff with cold
In the museum we repeat the journey of discovery, not really, more as a free interpretation. It is a trail that we follow with fragments of text, scribbles, notes, pieces of signed or painted paper, also beautiful, suggestive paintings on cardboard. Or just scratches and simplified sketches of a dog, as if the artist’s hand was stiff with cold.
Conceptual art, it reminds you of that. More idea than execution. But we see that wrong: Water goes much further.
Everything starts from Robert Scott’s diary, which pops up here and there in fragments. A note on a blotchy, frayed surface. Art? Barely, you think. But it is not about that one fragment on the wall, the installation in total is art.
That deserves research, requires attention and patience. The complete polar journey that Tjibbe Hooghiemstra has us undertake appears drawing by drawing, scribble after scribble, like a melting piece of glacier ice revealing the contours of a frozen animal or human being.
A large arctic circle on the museum floor shows us the way
And water, ice water, as subject, as theme. Water as a flowing element, as a metaphor of the artist’s world of thoughts, of what happened in his head, what came out of his hands. Exploring, thoughtful and exploratory. And we navigate with him.
It’s about Robert Scott, but Moby Dick also comes by. His whale may just pop up. While we wander around as visitors, the lack of footing is compensated by the imprint of a large Arctic Circle on the museum floor. It shows us the way.
Tjibbe Hooghiemstra does what art can be so good at, creating a perfect illusion. He takes us by the hand, makes us see and experience things, and often misleads us. His work appeals to our creative capacity, our sleepy sense of adventure, our way of seeing. Just like Scott didn’t know what he was about to encounter.
Water is such an adventure, it shares with us and shows itself in its full extent to those who try their best to see it.
Water
Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, Water . Museum De Buitenplaats, Eelde. Open: Tue-Sun 11am-5pm. Until June 18.