folded floors

Het Financieele Dagblad  1997

by Bert Jansen

In conversations about art in public spaces an oft heard complaint is that the environment is hardly taken into account and that the need for this art is completely wanting.
Often it is only about a decorative element or a too easy application of possibilities which were sometime fought in a museological context.
Meanwhile, the amount of art applications along public roads and in or nearby public buildings is so large and their shape so gratuitous that people are putting question marks at the obviousness with which art is placed in the public space.
The accidental passer-by will, in all probability, appreciate this “thing” as a marking of the spot where it located.
Whether a work of art in a public space is credible depends to a great extent on the intentions of the commissioning party. It is the commissioning party who is responsible for the choice of the artist. But before he makes this choice he should wonder why he chooses for art at a particular location in the first place. Often the commissioning party limits himself to the choice of the artist only, assuming the artist and his/her work are autonomous. The reputation of the artist counts as guarantee for quality.
The commissioning party thus acts as a collector of art, and the art work that is realized with this approach has often the quality of a transplantable and therefore negotiable object, even when it is located along the public road.
Visual arts in the public space can also be conceived as a distinct art form, in which the work is not seen separately from the surroundings or the building for which it is created.

The occasion to point here at the sense and nonsense of art in the public space is the creation of four floors of the design of Maria van Elk in the new closed institution of Krimpen aan de IJssel (The Netherlands).
The mosaic floors were on view for the public only before the taking in use of the institution. From now on they belong to the exclusive domain of the residents.

Design of the original glass cupola

The four floors are designed by Van Elk for four halls in the institution. These spaces are enclosed on the sides, and the light enters only through a glass cupola. These halls function not only as a passage between different departments, their main function is as recreational space for the residents. Each hall contains a row of niches with telephones in which the residents can have contact with the outside world of family and friends.
The remainder of the hall with a staircase and a guard cabin is not well balanced architecturally. Requirements of visibility from the cabin seem to have been the only factor that has determined the location of cabin and stairs.
Originally, Van Elk was to use the glass cupola for her art work. During the preparations, however, this turned out to be too costly. Thereon Van Elk proposed to make a design for the floors.
The floor design is not -contrary to what would be obvious- meant as geometrical template which connects the unordered elements in the hall. Maria van Elk has deliberately chosen for the opposite. Ordination is absent pretentiously. The idea is that the floor implicates a system extending outside the walls. The part that is visible inside the walls has come about arbitrarily in view of the way slanting planes are joined, colours and patterns are shoved in each other and broken tiles are merged. It gives the impression of a number of layers that are pushed over each other during a landslide. It could be called an unordered structure -a contradiction in terms- that disorganizes the interior of the hall.
The fragmentary design of the floor recalls a broken cohesiveness. If this implied content would become recognizably depicted, it could seem moralistic at this location. With the abstractness of materials and forms, however, the conversation is clear and objective. The interpretation arises from sensory experience of those who watches and walks on the floors.

On the level of sensory clarity with which the work can be experienced lies an important distinction with the work of the artist since the seventies. Van Elk mainly makes drawings with a sheer conceptual significance. According to Van Elk a drawing is the result of a work process in which is explored where figure and the depicted coincide with the image.
In 1981, for instance, she produced an object of 18 lithographically printed sheets of paper which were first wrinkled, and then printed with the periphery of a circle. Finally, when the paper sheets were again expanded, the periphery appeared fragmented in segmental arches. The circle can, however, be reconstructed at a glance by relating the segment arches to the accidental wrinkles in the paper sheets.

Wittgenstein

A few years later Van Elk quoted a number of theses of Wittgenstein that in a linguistic form represent the core of her visual thinking.
Wittgenstein: “the image has with the picture the logical form in common. In everyday language, no distinction is made between the fact of the image and the immaterial reference to something outside the drawing. A reference which is enclosed in the word “picture”.
In a drawing of Van Elk, as in the thesis of Wittgenstein, this distinction is indeed made.
This compels the viewer of the drawing to a concentration and a level of abstraction that accord with the attitude with which the drawing is made.
In the emphasis on the distinction between image, picture and depicted the drawings of Van Elk refer only to themselves. A repetition of moves seems to exist, a stalemate, whereby the viewer remains with empty hands as if she/he is after an illusion.
In fact such an approach reflects, in this particular case, the paradoxical situation of art opposite reality.

Vier diagonalen op gekreukeld papier (1979) Four diagonals on crumbled paper Collection An en Martien de Voigt		12 Diagonalen in geel, grijs en blauw (1979) Diagonals in yellow, grey and blue on crumbled paper Collection Coosje van Bruggen en Claes Oldenburg, New York