Last year Hans van Lunteren, together with biologist Jessica van Essen and program maker Hans van Dijk, developed the exhibition Accidental Green; seedlings of the city for the Centraal Museum. Urban greenery consists primarily of landscaped gardens, parks, trees and public gardens. But nature itself chooses places in the city where it can show its own primal strength. Information about this project can be found in the bicycle shed in the parking lot.

Lecture by Hans van Lunteren
Saturday, September 10, 2022 at 2:30 p.m.
In the series of artist lectures on Sunday afternoons, Hans van Lunteren talks in detail about his projects and art commissions.

As a visual artist, what can you contribute to the development of a residential area if you feel that a sculpture on a pedestal is no longer sufficient? This question underlies the various art-green projects that Hans van Lunteren has realized over the years.

In his lecture he will discuss the creation of Sjanghaipark (1970-present) which can be seen as one of the first projects in the Netherlands in which artists, together with residents, took charge of the design of the living environment as a process in time itself. Sjanghaipark is located north of Steck on the other side of the ring road in the Overvecht district.

Hans also talks about his first seedling project that he realized in the prison in Vught (2005-2012), commissioned by the Government Buildings Agency. And about De Gesloten Tuin, municipality Oosterhout (2006-2008), De Verlaten Tuinen van Geesinkveld, Diepenheim (2017), Het ZaailingenPocketPark (2018-present) and the project Toevallig Groen, seedlings of the city in Utrecht (2021).

He opposes the manner in which earth layers form under incredibly high pressure with human actions that ‘forcibly maintain our (cultivated) nature.’ The everyday, the possible future, the materials, and phenomena of the geological time scale – all of it come together in the installation resulting in a subjective experience of deep time. Felt as incomprehensibly large, the geological deep time connects the experience of our human time dimensions to the infinitely slow-moving ground under our feet and the direction of the slow-changing rivers.

From the title of the work Just Wave and Smile, one might conclude that the development and deformation of the earth and mankind are evident. Man as a species is like a geological force that also shapes the earth at a dizzying speed far into the future. Kevin Bauer investigates these shaping forces, seeking to know what is real and what is artificial.

www.kevin-bauer.com

Brutally pruned branches give rise to new shoots, fallen forest giants allow offspring to rise from their crushed bodies, wounded trunks bear their fate and fuse into twisted but powerful muscle tissue. Trees embody the alliance between vitality and injury, creation and destruction, life and death.

Anna J. van Stuijvenberg is interested in places where human intervention, nature and wilderness coexist as a matter of course. These places are recorded with a camera, after which van Stuijvenberg translates the photographs into monumental installations. Intuitively and in an organized way, she cuts up often rigid and laborious material into a layered and almost graphic landscape that is on the cutting edge of control and sprawl.

With her installations, she aims to create a place where viewers can once again coincide with their surroundings. Her landscapes are grand and impressive but also open-worked, almost fragile, as if one could touch an ancient spirit. Their power lies in the firm and at the same time subtle way in which the spectator is tugged out of his orbit, towards a universe in which control and wilderness, decay and growth, man and nature touch each other again.

(text C. Samsom)
www.annajvanstuijvenberg.nl

Egied Simons facilitates looking. By giving the whole a tight shape, smaller more detailed forms get the attention. His growing installations are instruments that are programmed with seeds, offshoots or rhizomes depending on their environment. The duration of the exhibition helps to determine this. Within this framework, playing with nature takes place. He is not looking for a solidified moment in time, but for the whole process of growth. It is clear that Egied Simons is not concerned with a theatrical action.

Simons investigates the strategies plants use to get a foothold in the earth and to absorb food. He experiments with pigments that are also nutrients. Then again, he allows seeds to germinate, exposing different growth structures. He also made light installations in which he scanned the contours of bushes using lasers.

The work has a strong investigative character and often touches on science. The forms and movements of vegetation and organisms fascinate him and are the material with which he works.

He also likes to make use of the knowledge of the people in the place where he exhibits. At Steck, he heard of a particular orchid that has a special root growth. This plant is now the guiding principle in the installation he made for Art on Full Ground.

Most works are developed specifically for a particular place. Often they are temporary works for in an exhibition or in an outdoor location. There is a certain expectation of the outcome, but nature never quite allows itself to be predicted and plays with it.

This art requires maintenance and a rhythmic, ritualistic way of working. There is a certain time frame and within it the work must emerge. Nature determines the final work of art.

www.egiedsimons.nl

The project Kaia is about the big challenge and the incredibly complicated topic: CO2. The research is about the development of new sustainable CO2 filters using algae, specifically the species diatoms. CO2 is absorbed in the object and oxygen is released through photosynthesis. After two months there is enough to harvest on the object. With the end product, the biomass, new material, biodiesel or even glass can be made.

‘For me, a design would never be successful if we, in the final product, only took from nature, exhausted nature.’  Kim van den Belt wants to find a way to also give back to nature in new developments. This can be done by thinking about the development process in advance, about how you can make a product CO2 neutral or CO2 negative. But you could also develop products that enter into a symbiotic relationship between man and product, where nature also benefits.

@kimvandenbelt

What do we really see and what do we imagine? According to Maze de Boer, visual interpretation leads us away from the content. Everyone knows this process. We tend to complement visible images with images we know.

With his work Maze de Boer puts his finger on the viewing process. He describes his artworks as conceptual attractions. The concept is his starting point and the visual (attraction) power of the work is then the result.

Maze de Boer is interested in the blurring of boundaries between visual art, architecture, theater and performance. His work often stems from the historical background and social context of the location.

Although his installations are usually called site-specific, he sees the works themselves more as site-responsive.

www.mazedeboer.com

She also approaches the garden as a spherical space.
The large stretched wall hangings with acrylic and cotton threads, paint and laminated photo parts have exceptionally coarse stitches. You can disappear into an imaginary greenhouse full of greenery.

www.marijkebreuers.nl

He scans his surroundings, fascinated by puddles of rainwater, raindrops on car windows, mushrooms or the course of rivers. Years ago, when the drone still seemed like a futuristic fantasy, he tied his camera to a kite and returned to his studio with countless snapshots from which he composed paintings.

He breaks eggs to make paint, saws sheets of birch plywood and set up his tools; glue sticks and wood glue.

Walter Simon does not paint as one usually paints; he ‘builds’ his paintings, in a way. Lines and shapes from the landscape receive extra attention as a result.

Here, among the garden tools at Steck’s, are some smaller works. But at his studio on the edge of the inner city, you can also find larger works. The landscape and the vegetation on it is an inexhaustible source and Walter Simon knows that.

www.waltersimon.nl

Her work arises through imagination and observation. She exposes plant structures as an attempt to understand the larger picture through microscopic detail. The work ultimately forms a combination of imagination and scientific observation.

In yet other works, she competes with nature in beauty and inventiveness. She tests nature’s resilience in paper, for example. In the long fiber of mulberry paper she cuts out drawings ‘to the bone’.
Nature is her companion and competitor.

www.nikkivanes.nl

Tanja Smeets is concerned with organic growth processes. In museums and in public spaces her work enters into an exciting dialogue with the architecture of the surroundings.

The installations often seem frozen in time, in a phase between flowing and dripping, growing and budding. Like parasites, they lay a poetic layer of organic forms over the hard surface.

She works with residual materials left over from industry. But also with materials from everyday life that are used in large quantities and different sizes play an important role in her constructions. This abundance of materials raises questions about our consumption.

The tension that arises between the obvious amount of produced materials in our world on the one hand and the imminent danger of a growing organism on the other, plays an important role in her work.

www.tanjasmeets.nl