Veranda - Pablo Casals / Robert Johnson
Exhibition 'Vista - Solitary Visions / Dynamic Views, organized by Fundament Foundation, Wolfslaar Park, Breda (NL)
Wolfslaar according to Bach – that barely begins to describe how sensational Jeroen Doorenweerd’s seem-ingly idea-less observation post really is. You walk up to a shed made of sheets of galvanized iron in a wooden frame. You open the door and you’re standing in a space that is open on one side. You know Wolfslaar Park is behind you, and spread out before you is a magnificent view of pastures and, beyond them, the tower of Bavel. You’re still standing in the park, amid an urban culture which, at the same time, you have left behind. In front of you, framed by Doorenweerd’s veranda, is a rural vista in which you have no part. You are an observer, left to your own thoughts, and for a moment you imagine you’re in a grandstand built just for you, enjoying a view that no one else can see. You realize how absurd the situation is. If instead of standing in this observation post by Jeroen Doorenweerd, isolated from the park behind you, you were simply walking along the edge of the woods, you would never see what you are seeing now. Yet he did not change the view in any way, but only the conditions that are apparently necessary for us to see it. And in the midst of these reflections, you suddenly be-come aware of the glorious music pouring out of a little loudspeaker: Johann Sebastian Bach’s six cello suites, performed by the virtuoso Pablo Casals, interspersed with pieces by twentieth-century composer Robert John-son. This special place makes you feel that Bach’s cello music never sounded so beautiful before, just as your experience of this Brabant landscape was never before so intense. The artist’s work has transformed an everyday scene, the kind you pass without a moment’s thought, into a sensation. (Frits de Coninck)