Support for a Glorified Ceiling, 2024
Oiled oak wood
225 x 225 x 225cm
Support for a Glorified Ceiling (2024) was part of the group exhibition Arbos, Lustwarande, Tilburg (NL)
07.07.24 - 04.10.24
‘The shadows of which wooden structures are hidden among the trees?’ For his work, artist Bart Lunenburg (b. 1995, lives and works in Amsterdam) often dives into the stories and traditions surrounding wooden architectural elements – as a construction material, as an indicator of power, or as a folkloric tool. Here, the artist introduces us to the hidden tales of De Oude Warande.
Support for a Glorified Ceiling builds on a series of works called A House with Two Shadows, in which Lunenburg exploring histories of construction and demolition in timber architecture. This has resulted in sculptures including carefully crafted scale models of roof constructions made in imitation of the architect-carpenters of the French Le Compagnonnage, whose members also used such models to share designs of ingenious wooden joints and trusswork with one another.
For this new work, Lunenburg has struck out in a new direction, playing with scale in both dimensions and time. He evokes the architecture of French roof constructions as a response to the history of the park, where a classicist palace was meant to be built in the seventeenth century, designed by the French court architect Robert de Cotte (1656–1735). The repetition of forms in the work refers both to the movement of raising the trusses and to an important aspect of rural building traditions: the practice of resurrecting exact copies of farmhouses that had been lost to fire.
‘Wood, because of its omnipresence, had at times a low status as a construction material,’ says Lunenburg. So, it was often concealed from view behind, for example, Gothic stone vaults in churches, or ceilings in the homes of the upper classes. The title refers to this sociohistorical dimension of timber construction, with the work offering a transhistorical reflection on the local environment, the status of wood as a medium and its interrelationship with class, visibility and with what – perhaps through human intervention – may continue to exist or return in a cyclical fashion.
Press
Volkskrant, Tijdens sculptuurtentoonstelling Lustwarande smelten kunst en natuurlijk samen, dit jaar extra omdat het thema ‘arbos’ is. article by: Esmee Postma
Review in Beelden Magazine
Het atelier van Bart Lunenburg, Gallery Viewer
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Oiled oak wood
225 x 225 x 225cm
Support for a Glorified Ceiling (2024) was part of the group exhibition Arbos, Lustwarande, Tilburg (NL)
07.07.24 - 04.10.24
‘The shadows of which wooden structures are hidden among the trees?’ For his work, artist Bart Lunenburg (b. 1995, lives and works in Amsterdam) often dives into the stories and traditions surrounding wooden architectural elements – as a construction material, as an indicator of power, or as a folkloric tool. Here, the artist introduces us to the hidden tales of De Oude Warande.
Support for a Glorified Ceiling builds on a series of works called A House with Two Shadows, in which Lunenburg exploring histories of construction and demolition in timber architecture. This has resulted in sculptures including carefully crafted scale models of roof constructions made in imitation of the architect-carpenters of the French Le Compagnonnage, whose members also used such models to share designs of ingenious wooden joints and trusswork with one another.
For this new work, Lunenburg has struck out in a new direction, playing with scale in both dimensions and time. He evokes the architecture of French roof constructions as a response to the history of the park, where a classicist palace was meant to be built in the seventeenth century, designed by the French court architect Robert de Cotte (1656–1735). The repetition of forms in the work refers both to the movement of raising the trusses and to an important aspect of rural building traditions: the practice of resurrecting exact copies of farmhouses that had been lost to fire.
‘Wood, because of its omnipresence, had at times a low status as a construction material,’ says Lunenburg. So, it was often concealed from view behind, for example, Gothic stone vaults in churches, or ceilings in the homes of the upper classes. The title refers to this sociohistorical dimension of timber construction, with the work offering a transhistorical reflection on the local environment, the status of wood as a medium and its interrelationship with class, visibility and with what – perhaps through human intervention – may continue to exist or return in a cyclical fashion.
Press
Volkskrant, Tijdens sculptuurtentoonstelling Lustwarande smelten kunst en natuurlijk samen, dit jaar extra omdat het thema ‘arbos’ is. article by: Esmee Postma
Review in Beelden Magazine
Het atelier van Bart Lunenburg, Gallery Viewer
Model for Support for a Glorified Ceiling, 2024