Doorzon, Bart Lunenburg, 2017
My most recent project, Doorzon, is a collection of works that all build around the way sunlight falls into our houses. For example, for months I blinded the window of my bedroom with a panel, in order to register the light of an entire month, not by directly taking a photograph of it, but through the discolouration of the paper. Catching light on a piece of paper forms one of the basic principles of the photography.
In Dutch houses the windows are designed in a way that enables large quantities of sunlight to enter the house. These typical doorzonwoningen inspired me to make a scale model. In this scale model the simplified cell of a doorzonwoning has been multiplied and placed into a juxtaposition next and in front of each other into a grid of 90 houses.
In this fictional architectural structure the streets have completely disappeared, thereby all the houses have merged into each other. I found the modernist ideal of transparency and light which are clearly visible in this house type very interesting; although these large windows also have the consequence outside world and inside space are blending into each other. Looking at the sculpture, the viewer may question where in this sequence of private spaces the public domain went.
Most of the time I start my projects making observations in public space with using photography, this helps me to observe and draw conclusions from it. Although the photographic medium forms the basis of my practice, a photograph can be start of a drawing, which can lead to a scale model. Subsequently, the scale model can lead to a sculpture in an installation or be used as an object in a performance in a video work. I find it highly fascinating with what kind of ideologies the architectural spaces around us are designed; for example the modernist idea that light and space are primarily conditions for human well-being. Windows, walls and facades are forming a recurring motive in my work. Although you won’t directly find many people in my work, human traces are always visible. In my practice over the past few years I have focussed on the function and role of ‘the window’ in our daily environment and as a motive in the history of art and architecture. My work process can take the form of a photographic series, video work, scale model, sculpture and performance.
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