Title: If only I could make a retrospective exhibition of my thoughts on a 1:1 scale
2007 / 2008
photos by: Peter Cox & Suus Heersema
Project executed by invitation of the Jan Cunen Museum, Oss.
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‘Langenberg’s human alternatives to inhuman city-planning have produced a convincing exhibition.’
de Volkskrant - Art tips, 13 December 2007
´Sjaak Langenberg is masterful observer of the local situation, including all the potentially painful areas, which are effectively, and not infrequently, sublimated with a hearty laugh. What always grips me with Langenberg’s work, alongside the sharp observations and the humour, are two intertangled notions: openness and empathy. They’ve replaced aesthetics – although I realise that such a thing as the aesthetics of the concept does exist.'
René Pingen, director SM’s
OSS – As part of his being awarded the Visual Art Prize 2007 by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Noord-Brabant, the Jan Cunen Museum in the Dutch town of Oss staged a retrospective of 14 projects by Sjaak Langenberg, from the period 1997-2007. The title ‘If only I could make a retrospective exhibition of my thoughts on a 1:1 scale’ is not entirely free of irony as in fact, Langenbergs work is always elsewhere – in inner-city neighbourhoods, new housing estates, polders and schools – all places where Langenberg flips reality over sideways. For the exhibition Langenberg documented his projects in articles, photos, television and radio fragments, in order to display the scope of the work. The red line throughout the exhibition consisted of posters showing material from the projects photographed on a 1:1 scale. The fifteen posters, designed by Vanessa van Dam, mapped out the scale of the objects in question: from the closed space of a living room to the infinite horizon of the polder.
Links:
Dutch national newspaper de Volkskrant: Why do the farmers emigrate? (Dutch only)
© Sjaak Langenberg & Vanessa van Dam
