Objet abandonné

Object Abandonné is composed of a bronze tree in a plastic pail, with coloured balloons attached to its branches. The tree once had a better life on someone's balcony, but it was abandoned. Now it's dead; the balloons scoff at nature, but slowly deteriorate as their air leaks out. The tree is presented nonchalantly, so that it doesn't look like art, but rather what it was: garbage. On the balcony it represented a kind of nature in which we like to believe, but nature proved merely a utensil, and the tree was carelessly discarded when it couldn't sustain its owner's neglect.

This work is a representation of the present day urban landscape of transportation and transition and finds its inspiration in the Langwell model of Prague, a three-dimensional illustration of the city created in 1820. The visitor is invited to get lost in the landscape, stare out the windows to find the exact landscape in which he stands on the other side of the glass – a landscape repeating itself in a landscape.

2011

for project 'Hard Shoulders', Lokaal01, Breda (The Netherlands)

'International Forest Art', China, Mount Lushan (China)

height 140 cm

bucket, bronze, balloons