The Route is Being Recalculated

From De Pont's Collection

02 June - 12 Sep 2020

In the large presentation of the collection being installed at De Pont Museum this summer, thirty years of collecting is viewed from the vantage point of the turbulent times in which we now live. Art has the capacity to grow with the times and keeps on inviting new interpretations. In The Route is Being Recalculated – a playful reference to words spoken by a navigation system when a wrong turn is taken – the collection is thus considered on the basis of a moment when so much that was taken for granted has been shaken up. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, struggling with the consequences of our history with slavery, are being faced with abuse of power in the #MeToo scandal, and groups not heard are raising their voices.

For De Pont the lockdown has been a forced period of reflection. How do current developments influence the way we look at our collection? Where do we stand? And: how do we move forward? Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, director for a year now, joins curator Maria Schnyder in taking stock of the whole with a new collection display full of familiar works, new acquisitions and rarely shown pieces, thereby bringing the collection into sharp relief.
Job Koelewijn’s The Clockshop acts as a thought-provoking and telling point of departure. Time captured in a sealed-off clock store which, like a pendulum itself, swings back and forth. The image could be regarded as a contemporary vanitas symbol, but nowadays the work also brings to mind the moment when the world seemed to come to a halt as a result of the pandemic, while time kept on ticking, elusively, at the same pace.
Such added significance can also be seen with Catherine’s Room, the five-part video work by Bill Viola, in which a woman, completely isolated from the outside world, intently gives shape to the rhythm of her days and existence. A contemplative work about devotion and the cycle of life, which has been in the collection for well over ten years but which now suddenly allows us to recognize our own forced isolation.

Sometimes artists seem to have special antennae for the spirit of the times. Take, for instance, Junction, the text image that Lothar Baumgarten painted on the wall at De Pont in 2003. The work about the American railway lines that were constructed ruthlessly, straight across Native American territories, can now be seen again for the first time in nearly twenty years and has yet to lose any of its expressive power. In two dream-like and yet confrontational video works, Kara Walker reflects, by way of a poignantly beautiful play of silhouettes, on the African diaspora and the violent consequences of racial segregation in the United States that are still going on today. She allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.

And what do we actually expect from the woman’s eye? Monster Chetwynd depicts herself as a frightening bat, Raphaela Vogel as the center of the universe, and Fiona Banner presents parts of fighter jets as perky breasts. These artists show that many women don’t want to comply with standard role patterns and thus undermine male stances of rhetoric and dominance. How, from that perspective, do we then look at the self-portrait by Marlene Dumas?
Here the works of Rosemarie Trockel and Michel François are above all an appeal to keep on making fresh, and sharp, observations. Trockel stimulates childlike imagination and an open mind with her enlarged versions of toy cars. François practically turns that capacity into the essence of his approach. With apparent ease he transforms everyday and trivial situations – a sweater with holes, broken neon lighting, a hole in the ground – into images of monumental and poetic expressiveness.

The new route at De Pont takes us past old friends and new images. Past the pollen that Wolfgang Laib magically transformed into a unique source of energy, still radiating the same force after many years. Past the paintings of Sigmar Polke, who elevated the creative process to a mythical one: we keep on looking at them without fully grasping them. Ultimately everything comes together in the works of Thomas Schütte, which crop up throughout the entire presentation. In these Schütte reminds us of the role and the potential meaning of art: his Grosse Geister, for instance, may come across as being grand and imposing, but their reflective surface causes their appearance to change with every viewer who stands in front of them. In that sense these ‘spirits’ are a perfect metaphor for what good art can do: it grows with the times and keeps on inviting new interpretations.