Art that doesn’t look like art, but turns out to be art, that’s what we encounter in one of the rooms of Museum Voorlinden. You become disorganized, one of the nicest effects of art.
In Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, weeds just grow out of the plinths. You bend over and see if it’s real. You never know for sure in a museum of modern art. But then you see a sign low on the white wall that reads: ‘Tony Matelli Weed (2011)”. Really something for Museum Voorlinden, to show art that pops up in unexpected places and puzzles you.
Who is Tony Matelli and why does he plant weeds in museum galleries? Does a phenomenon like weeds still fit within our idea of what art is? That’s how we can do it. But we don’t, we don’t come up with the idea.
The American sculptor Tony Matelli (1971) often incorporates botanical elements into his sculptures. For example, he hung real flowers in plastic drinking bottles or plants in a pot upside down from the museum ceiling. He has a preference for creating objects that are both disturbing and comical. So the question is: should we laugh or stay serious with his weed sculpture Weed ?
Lisa Fishman, director of The Davis Museum at Wellesley College chose the latter when Matelli are there Weed exhibited. “Weeds form markers along the paths of culture – of cultivating and failing,” she explains. That sounds nice. Such statements suddenly give such a simple plant, which we usually prefer to weed or sprinkle with poison, a higher meaning. “They are stray, elusive truths,” she added mysteriously.
The artist prefers to keep both feet on the ground. Tony Matelli: ‘I want the public to see it not as art at first, but as weed, as a real intruder who has no place there.’ Are Weed Surprisingly, it’s not even meant as a criticism of how we treat nature, he says.
He’s very right. The nice thing about his weed sculptures is that you first get the urge to warn the attendant and ponder the botanical riddle. There is even something unsafe about nature invading a museum just like that. Moreover, other visitors should not think that you, asshole, see art in it.
We struggle with wanting to open ourselves to everything, even a nail in the wall (there is one, by the way) and our need for order and understanding. That is the artistic message of Weed . This ensures that you enter the next room a little lighter, prepared for more surprises and riddles.
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Museum Voorlinden
Tony Matelli, Weed . Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar. Open: every day 11am-5pm. Until May 29. In one of the rooms of the Rinus van der Velden exhibition.