cv | works | sculptures | site specific | environmental | land art | architectural | publications | exhibitions | symposia/lectures | cities | encounters | accounts

CITIES - sculptures and land art

Den Haag

1986|1989 Three artists made proposals for the Molenwijk area of The Hague. Mine was selected. The housing project was designed for people who had to move from another part of the town. These people are not exactly art lovers. During the unveiling ceremony two of the new inhabitants (socially less adapted people) gave their children hammers and instructed them to pound on the sculpture until the guests and the alderman, who was to perform the act of unveiling, found refuse in a nearby cafe. No one took any action, the Dutch being very ''tolerant'' and art, for them, is a disposable matter anyway. Ever since a few of them have been trying to destroy the work; pulling at it with their cars and cutting it with their do-it-yourself grinding machines. In the early nineties the police declared the situation too dangerous and before the situation could be investigated the department of public works took it down.

This was my second project for The Hague. The first one - below - was never installed because the advisory committee, nor the representative of the public works department knew that the intersection, for which I made a 12,5 meter steel arch, was to be reconstructed. So when the parts were ready, they were stored and returned to me in 1997. Both projects cost The Hague more than $100.000. The ready made parts were stored and eventually given to me. During the nineties Queen Beatrix requested her commissioner in the province of South-Holland to look for alternate locations to install the sculpture. The town of Jacobswoude was very interested but could not fund the laying of the foundation. Already in the beginning of the nineties the town of Rhoon (county Albrandswaard) was interested but lost interest intermittently. After the mayor and aldermen interrupted the first attempt at installing the sculpture on the 'final' location, which the previous local government had chosen as well as my traveling back down to Holland to present proposals for this new, other location, newly elected Mayor and Aldermen of the municipality Albrandswaard made a decision to construct it on the mentioned 'final' location.

3D anaglyph photographs of my sculpture

works©author: Lucien den Arend
© 1998/2016 denarend.com Google
this site was developed by DutchDeltaDesign
Penttilä
Seppäläntie 860  51200 Kangasniemi Finland
telephone +358 (0)44 264 12 12

HOME
new on this site
vantablack

use my translucent backgrounds of different opacity and color