Artwork Data

Title

Object

Artist

Peter Jansen, Matthijs van Dam

Year

1984

Material

ijzer

Dimensions

100 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Professor B. M. Teldersweg, Den Haag

City district

Scheveningen

GPS data

52.0960113886535, 4.28697510691651 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

In the natural situations in which we work, colour (and especially the industrially manufactured heavy colour coating) forms a contrast or a signal that we consider necessary,' say the duo Peter Jansen and Matthijs van Dam in their 1984 publication 'Environmental Sculpture'. The two-headed 'design team for environmental art' made a few monumental works in our country in the period 1978-1998, including 'Object', which is placed on the Teldersweg in The Hague.

Peter Jansen was originally a painter and in the early sixties received much praise for his use of paint and colour. The austere 'Object' does not seem to fit in with this, but in fact his paintings were also about the fundamental use of form and colour. A picture of a pile of corpses was primarily a motif, 'just as another used a landscape or still life'. In the mid-sixties, Jansen was counted among the so-called 'New Realists', just like Peter Struycken and Bob Bonies. For them, elementary image research formed the most important starting point.

Many artists in those days investigated the possibilities of new media; for them, painting had had its day. Jansen and Van Dam also experimented early on with audiovisual media and computer design. Since 1982, the duo has used Computer Aided Design for complex situations such as the Teldersweg. The design could then immediately be tested against the influence of environmental factors. In this case, it was the passing traffic. The height of the trees and street furniture was also taken into account. Simulations were used to see what the result would look like as it passed by in changing circumstances.

The work of art consists of two slender, three-sided diagonal columns, which lean towards each other at an equal angle. At a height of about 15 metres, the black diagonals meet and are cut perpendicularly, as if by a heavenly sword. The coloured intersections 'float' above ground level 'like a visual signal'.

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