SONSBEEK 10 – a report from the Netherlands

While this year’s Sao Paulo Biennial commits itself to radically and intellectually question the system and the economy of international art biennials, the 10th Sonsbeek International Sculpture Exhibition does the total opposite, visually as well as conceptually. If Sao Paolo presents a void, an immaterial edition, Sonsbeek celebrates the object status of art. Be it in extremely divergent ways, both recurring art events obviously evaluate the post-war, modernist principles from which they originate. In the Dutch city of Arnhem, where Sonsbeek takes place since 1949, one will not find highbrow discourse or visitors alike. With its 10th edition, taking place from June 13 to September 21, Sonsbeek seeks to include a local, albeit large audience – in order to secure an 11th edition - by means of a recognizable theme that anyone can respond to. Artistic director Anna Tilroe has invited 28 artists to visualise the pursuit for ‘Grandeur’, or human greatness. The result is a safe, enjoyable, rather traditional art event, which exposes an optimism and faith in art that is reminiscent of exactly the post-war, hopeful rhetoric, which Sao Paulo Biennal, according to its curators’ statements, takes as objectives being accomplished long ago.

In her writing and recent interviews, Anna Tilroe has often expressed a desire for a new vision in art. Art still has an educational and ethical task, says Tilroe, and needs therefore to be rescued from the present-day entanglements of commercialism and other art fashions. Her belief in the function of art is almost a-typical today, but fits well into Sonsbeek’s “unique tradition – legendary reputation”, to use the self-confident wording of the exhibition’s website. In 1949, a group of representatives from the Dutch Association for Sculptors together with the City Council of Arnhem realized the first International Sculpture Exhibition in the open air. With more than a 100.000 visitors it was an immediate success. In total five successful exhibitions of “progressive art” took place in one of the Netherlands’ most beautiful parks, until Wim Beeren in 1971 shook the Sonsbeek standard from its foundations. It was not the committee, but Beeren self who set the parameters of what would be the state-of-the-art. Thus, Beeren took the freedom to postpone the whole exhibition to include the newly discovered land art, and, as a direct result of that, rejected the idea of a traditional sculpture show. His Sonsbeek went “Beyond the Borders”, as the exhibition was also titled, thus bringing art outside of the park, outside of the city and even the country - to places all over the world. Since then Sonsbeek has not been limited to the park grounds. It became known for presenting a survey of international trends in contemporary art, and for giving the artists the opportunity to really work within the local context, to create new work that results from their involvement in and from researching the local situation. The three Sonsbeek editions of 1986 (curated by Saskia Bos), 1993 (curated by Valerie Smith) and 2001 (curated by Jan Hoet) all reflected these principles, the latter using the telling title “Locus Focus”. Hoet’s suggestion to the artists as well as to the visitors was to focus on the location through the eyes of the art. Typically, art was considered to have social impact by the subsequent artistic committees and directors of Sonsbeek, but the visitor numbers showed something else. Sonsbeek 8 in 1993 attracted only 30.000 visitors, and Sonsbeek 9 in 2001 a shameful 17.000 – a debacle that needed to be overcome by Sonsbeek 10.

Anna Tilroe, established Dutch art critic but inexperienced curator, decided to focus once again on the park, and to engage a wide public in Sonsbeek 10. Her Sonsbeek strives for social inclusion through ‘Grandeur’ and, most notably, through the ‘Procession’, which took place in Arnhem on June 8, 2008. Not unlike religious processions, the Sonsbeek event attempted to evoke solidarity among people. The artworks (sometimes miniature versions, sometimes parts, but often the original works) were carried through the city by local people, who had gathered into contemporary guilds. Some of these guilds (e.g. the Guild of Rotary Arnhem) are existing clubs or associations, some (e.g. the Guild of Many Cultures, the Guild of Sonsbeek Women) were assembled for the occasion. All groups were trained intensively by the Sonsbeek organization. A clever move, because months before the opening, Sonsbeek was already creating its audience - connecting them to the organization, to the art and to each other. And the results were visible. A rare sort of social cohesion became tangible during the Procession, where the participants simultaneously stepped to the rhythm of the solemn ‘Sonsbeek Suite’ and the ‘Grandeur Song’, proud of the art they were bringing to the park, and to the people. Whether the art really became part of the people, or the people just temporarily became part of the art, remains the question. How to extend the revived social power of art, and its relation to and within the park?

As might be clear from its aspirations, the Procession was not only a prelude to the exhibition. It was an essential part of it. In fact, all artists who were invited to participate in Sonsbeek 10 were given the twofold assignment to create work that dealt with Grandeur on a human scale, and to contribute to the Procession. Obviously, all 28 artists did exactly what they were asked to do. With the exception of Marijke van Warmerdam’s newest film and Hans van Houwelingen’s intervention in a monument, all artworks in the park are sculptures and installations, which reflect the theme above any engagement with the local context or their actual setting in the park. For some artists, such as Rini Hurkmans, Matthew Monahan or Stephen Wilks, the Procession seemed more important than the show. Hurkmans is one of the relatively many and not necessarily well-known Dutch artists in Sonsbeek. She created a beautiful carpet, measuring 32 square metres and consisting of hundreds of white vests, shirts and blouses, which was carried by the Guild of Red Cross Volunteers and Members of Martial Arts Clubs. The carpet’s visual power gets lost in the park, now it is covered with insects and leaves, however the artist will ceremonially relocate it in the park during the show – perhaps in the form of a mini-procession? The metal-plaster-plastic hermit by Matthew Monahan and the cloth donkeys by Stephen Wilks were also specifically made for the Procession, but are repetitive of recent work. In the park these Procession works, as with other works, are sitting on seemingly arbitrary locations. Most of the newly created pieces are not conceptually related to specific locations of the park. This does not mean that their installation does not work – on the contrary. The physical placement of the artworks is well thought through. Take the enormous glass sculpture of Jean-Michel Othoniel, representing a richly decorated crown, which hangs silently and symmetrically between six trees, or the magnificent balloon construction by Tomas Saraceno, exposed as an oasis, a hidden treasure in the dense woods. A well-working visual correspondence was also made between the neo-classical Sonsbeek Villa and Alain Séchas’s Lazy King that lies in front of the white country house. Séchas’ large, white comic book-like figure was also transformed into mascot of the Sonsbeek exhibition, reminding its visitors to retreat and reflect, before thinking about Grandeur. Sometimes you wish the artists had done that, too. In Sonsbeek 10, critical analysis of human greatness is completely lacking. The darker effects of Grandeur (its delusions, its oppressions) are never really touched, the sole exception being Fernando Sánchez Castillo’s Spitting Leaders, a humorous, four-headed fountain of famous despots spitting at each other.

That the relativity of human greatness failed to be addressed is easily explained. Both Sonsbeek and its current artistic director simply do not allow for criticality. Sonsbeek wants a positive, well-attended show after the recent drop in attendance; Tilroe wants to relate art to social life, to free art from the flows of capital, dominating curatorship, and other restrictions to art’s social power. Tilroe desires to establish a new relation between art and the audience in Arnhem, both for Sonsbeek and for the sake of art. In such idealism (self-)critical art apparently does not fit in. It is illustrative that Tilroe often takes as an example the work of Tomas Saraceno, as if he were the role model for artists at Sonsbeek. Trained as an architect but brought into visual art by his utopian ideas, Saraceno dreams of a world in which people and goods could move freely: a world without borders, without passports. He has carried out large balloon constructions across the world, often in collaboration with the local inhabitants. For Sonsbeek, he created the Flying Green House, which consists of a cloud of 32 helium-filled, transparent balloons, held together by a special net. In the central, large balloon, plants are growing, while the smaller ones ensure that the temperature remains constant. Visitors can actually take part in the art by climbing a ladder that leads into Saraceno’s and, very likely, Tilroe’s dream. Stepping into Saraceno’s utopia is like stepping simultaneously into Sonsbeek 1 and Sonsbeek 10, into new and renewed visions that absolutely correspond. Tilroe’s quest for a (supposedly) new vision in art might be far from fashionable, perhaps even naïve, it has been done deliberately – as her 20 years of art criticism underlines. If her Sonsbeek is the way to relate art to society, then the number of visitors will tell.