Artwork Data

Title

Multipipe

Artist

Fred van de Walle, Henk van der Plas, Peter ten Hoorn

Year

1977

Material

Staal, geverfd

Dimensions

h. 800 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Escamplaan, Den Haag

City district

Loosduinen

GPS data

52.043583339539, 4.2414367721054 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

From triangle to square, from flat to three-dimensional. Multipipe' by the three The Hague artists Henk van der Plas, Peter ten Hoorn and Fred van de Walle can assume different forms. If the spectator changes his position, the object changes shape. It is an optical illusion, because nothing actually changes. The thick steel, sky-blue pipe is rigid and static, but looks dynamic.

In this sculpture, you can imagine that a giant hand bent the tubes into their current position. It is reminiscent of an enormous paperclip. There is one flaw in this comparison. A paperclip has two long and two short sides, whereas in the sculpture of the trio, all sides are the same length. The mathematically based work of art is meticulously thought out - in all its simplicity and geometry.
In the seventies Van der Plas, Ten Hoorn and Van de Walle worked together in 'GROEP'. They made sculptures like Multipipe, because they felt that the new Kraayestein housing estate needed a clear landmark, but they also painted and drew.

Van der Plas made white wall reliefs from geometric forms, which he repeated in a barely perceptible variation. Add to this the effect of depth and a nuanced play of light and dark arises. Van de Walle produced paintings with horizontal hatching. His working method led to subtle deviations in the stripe structure. As a result, lively lines of light appear in his compositions. In Ten Hoorn's tightly designed compositions, sharp lines and planes overlap each other. Compared to the first two, his work was more objective and process-oriented. However diverse the forms of their work may be, the three artists were kindred spirits at the time in their striving to achieve visual effects with simple means, both spatially and on the flat surface.

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