Competition proposal for two sculpures inside of the new to build main building of the UZ Ghent hospital.
A hospital is pre-eminently a place where people go for care. It helps us to heal or relieve pain. Sometimes just to make the time left as bearable as possible. The environment can play an important role. The caring and healing place that a hospital is also makes us realise that we are vulnerable. Care and vulnerability go together. Strangely, to realise this can be also comforting. It connects us and touches on the essence of who we are.
It is this tension between care and vulnerability that I want to express in the two artworks:
A long massive round bar is bent seemingly at random hundreds of times along its entire length, creating a wavering line that reaches upwards. One or two supports hook into the line and keep it straight. It is monumental and at the same time fragile. Which is reinforced by the fact that the structure pushes the boundaries of what is statically and technically possible.
Like a rope dancer, they play with the boundaries. They are vulnerable and virtuosic at the same time.
