Summer Residency PARK
This show is the outcome of a short summer residency period at PARKplatform for visual arts. They‘ve offered Van Doornum to work and present his work in their monumental space, a former chapel. During almost two months van Doornum has created a spacious installation that reaches into the corners of the space. The installation consists of several new sculptures and architectural interventions.
According to Van Doornum, PARK’s space requires a big gesture. Previous ideas and parts of works has led to new compilations, together they create a space-filling installation that includes various communication layers.
Many of the works on show have an urge to escape. Besides of escaping, this can also be seen as an act of reaching out and connecting. The larger line works in the space are transcending into a network of signals and communication, which manifests itself in the focus of the viewer. Through communication masts on the wall, a stream of data as large as the internet can be felt. Something that connects us, but at the same times it drifts us apart.
In the installation at PARK, Van Doornum’s objects function as architectural altars; they provide direction without being symbolic. The promise that something was present shines through. The central absence of people is very present: the body dies; the object – the coat, a table – remains. Van Doornum’s work is sharp, but at the same time soft and hopeful. It goes up as a divine gesture and seems to want to escape. It is this game, between here and there, that Van Doornum has used tocontrol PARK’s monumental space.
Photography: Jasper van Aarle and Jonathan van Doornum.
