Veenhuizen must be more than a village of paupers and prisoners. This summer, a route with contemporary art was put together with that idea in mind: Watching Then Seeing.
The ambitions are great, the start is modest. To the first edition of Look Then See no command is preceded and no theme is connected. “Artists were allowed to decide for themselves what they want to show,” says Joop Vos.
Art route
With his partner Maria Berkhout, Vos is the initiator of a 4 kilometer long art route through Veenhuizen. Last year, the couple organized NoordNu, with art in the old horticultural school in Frederiksoord, that other colony of Benevolence. Because a repetition turned out to be complicated there, they settled in the village where order and discipline have determined the atmosphere for two hundred years.
For example, with the permission of De Nieuwe Rentmeester, owner of about eighty properties and buildings, they ensured that Akmar Nijhof could fill a former potato shed with an installation consisting of a raked floor of 750 kilos of potato flour with a mobile made of scythes hanging above it, which they borrowed from farmers in the area.
A chorus of endangered birds sing SOS
And Peter Veen was assigned a building that was once used by the fire brigade. Veen maintained the alarmist character by installing a sound system in the house where a chorus of endangered birds – from linnet to bittern, from sparrow to oriole – sings and calls out on the basis of the Morse code SOS: three times short, three times long, three times short. Later on the route, Veen himself will also speak using QR codes.
“Many buildings need maintenance,” says Vos about the world heritage. “In addition, there is a need for more different things to happen in the village. It should not become a second Orvelte here, but add something. Visual arts can play a role in this. This route is a step towards adjusting Veenhuizen’s image.”
Henriette Tavenier and Margriet Thissen moved into a former pharmacist’s house that once bore the name of Accuracy. Where Thissen shows screen printing on textile on the first floor, alternating between landscapes and figures, Tavenier shows drawings and paintings that tend towards abstraction on the ground floor. They are made with lithography and seem inspired by the Fochteloërveen that starts on the other side of the Hoofdweg.
‘Society is derailing in all sorts of ways’
Vos and Berkhout took care of the last two locations themselves. In the sacristy behind the church, the latter shows ceramic work on a cupboard in which chasubles, the priest’s outer garments, were once kept. Her installation consists of white porcelain ‘pastries’ on a layer of black-silver sand.
In a room next to the Verenigingsgebouw, Vos shows abstract landscapes that are reminiscent of the jungle or – closer to home – of bushes. “You have to make a little effort to get in,” he warns in advance. If you look longer, you will see paintings for which no sketch was preceded, but an inner world is being explored in a process with paint and color.
With his work, Vos wants to seduce people into more introspection. “That is something he misses in today’s society,” he says. “Our society is going horribly outward and derailing in all sorts of ways. If you visit this route, you will see that more artists are working on it. Each in their own way.”
Look Then See can be visited until 24 September on Saturdays and Sundays from 13:00 to 17:00. Starting point is Bitter & Zoet on the Hospitaallaan in Veenhuizen. www.kijkdanzien.nl