Gijs Bakker and K. Schippers: Basics exhibition in Sonneveld HouseGijs Bakker and K. Schippers: Basics exhibition in Sonneveld House

In Sonneveld House, designer Gijs Bakker and poet K. Schippers present combinations of jewellery and poetry selected especially for this exhibition from their extensive oeuvres. The result is an environment in which visitors can make new connections and entertain alternative interpretations. The exhibition opened on July 11 following a week of special activities both online and offline. It can be visited until 10 January 2021.

The starting point of the exhibition Basics is the difference between observing a piece of jewellery and a poem. As an observer looking at an item of jewellery, it's easy to adopt a loaded point of view: Would you want to wear it? What's it worth? With a poem, you are more likely to see the letters on the page as a whole at first, passing judgement after reading it. What jewellery and poetry have in common is the ability to convey a message in a compact form.

By capturing his own perceptions in words, K. Schippers turns every reader into a viewer, able to share his discoveries about reality no matter where they are. A villa like Sonneveld House is a place where people have lived. Now that it has become a museum house, all that vibrancy is, as he might put it, 'solidified activity'. In this special context, the alternation of looking and reading becomes an open question to the visitor, asking for fresh connections and insights - new 'basics'.

Basics

How many boxes did I see before I
thought of a box,
of a lid, its contents,
three, seven?

How many wardrobes before I
opened a door, grabbed a
shoe, pressed the fabric of a
jacket against my cheeks,
five, eight?

To how many did I have to
count to find a word,
how many did I have to see before
one wardrobe was subsumed
into another?

How often before many becomes few?

The different themes and concepts that play a role in the exhibition are reloaded by the circumstances that we are currently living through. For example, the differences in observation from a distance and up close, and the traces that (social) activities seem to leave in our experience of spaces and objects, are heightened by the current pandemic.

Gijs Bakker trained as a jewellery designer and industrial designer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the Konstfack Skolen in Stockholm, Sweden. His work includes home accessories, household appliances and furniture, as well as jewellery. The starting point for all his designs is the way he perceives the world.

The bracelet Plastic Soup, for example, is the result of a realisation of the impact of plastic straws on the environment. Bakker designed a bracelet make from straws, covered with gold. Black to White, meanwhile, is a necklace with the faces of Bakker's personal heroes, people of every skin colour. With this piece, he aims to draw attention to persistent racism and xenophobia.

K. Schippers (the pen name of Gerard Stigter) has been committed to making the ordinary extraordinary since the late 1950s. He was inspired by the Dada movement and artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters. In 1985, he founded the magazine Barbarber with J. Bernlef and G. Brands, which marked a shift from the expressive Vijftigers group of poets to a focus on everyday reality. Like Gijs Bakker, K. Schippers examines the process of observation and the reporting of it.

This is not the first time that designers and artists have responded to Sonneveld House, or contributed through a creative intervention to a new interpretation of the museum house. As part of the series Interventions, Het Nieuwe Instituut occasionally invites an artist, designer or architect to create a site-specific installation for Sonneveld House.

By confronting contemporary art and design, the carefully restored museum house is brought into the present day.

In 2016, for example, three international artists created a work for the house following an invitation from Het Nieuwe Instituut. Santiago Borja installed an observatory on Sonneveld House's roof, while Eva Rothschild placed monumental sculptures, which can be seen as an alternative form of architecture, in various places in the house. The French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created an audio work for the museum house. This triptych was put together by guest curator Erich Weiss.

In 2013 and 2015 respectively, Dutch designers Richard Hutten and Petra Blaisse were invited to respond to the house's architecture and interior through their work.

Images are free to download and use with the proper credits. For additional images and further information, please contact: press@hetnieuweinstituut.nl.