Artwork Data

Title

Twaalf beelden

Artist

Ossip Snoeck

Year

1988

Material

plaatstaal

Dimensions

150 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Newtonplein, Den Haag

City district

Segbroek

GPS data

52.0725577610018, 4.27909161512294 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

How wonderful can playing be! Sneaking over a fence, jumping over it or performing a balancing act on the edge, somersaulting over the fence or just leaning on it. Ossip made twelve colourful figures that are somehow connected to the fence that surrounds the playground at Newtonplein.

The function of the fence depends on its users. Sometimes the fence provides protection, other times it is a tool or instrument. In all cases, it is the cheerful marker of a place where people dance the tango, do a handstand, read their newspaper or do fitness exercises, meet or make love.
All sorts of things are going on with the imagined users of the fence. Ossip made caricatures of them to keep their identity as simple and recognisable as possible. The people and situations he depicts seem to have been taken from comic strips or cartoons. Their nature and character is as flat as a dime. The same goes for the way they are executed. They are cut from large sheets of steel, painted in cheerful colours and then attached to the fence.

How different this early commission is in relation to Ossip's autonomous art. In it, the artist is teeming with mutilated or deformed people. The artist manipulates existing, historical, black-and-white photo images by enlarging, colouring and omitting them. Sometimes he adds attributes. The result is alienating human images, which have a threatening quality. Ossip's photographic work functions as a time machine. What is far away comes closer. In this way, he also brings transience closer.

Close