Artwork Data
Artwork Location
Address
Turfmarkt, Den Haag
City district
Centrum
GPS data
52.079301563123, 4.3215091436554 View on map
Artwork Description
Text
It makes you dizzy! If you look up at the gate at Turfmarkt 147, there seems to be no end to the two refined, slender towers that stand here. Over 140 metres high, these buildings housed the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the Ministry of Security and Justice in their new offices in the autumn of 2013. At the time, it was the largest office building in the Netherlands. Due to the limited dimensions of the plot, architect Hans Kollhoff had to go to considerable heights. Just try to compete with that as a work of art. Yet Per Kirkeby succeeded particularly well with his monumental bronze sculpture.
For this percentage order in the front garden of the two ministries, the internationally renowned Danish artist realised a monolith that stands out not only because of its scale, but especially because of its shape. The deep black patinated colossus has something mysterious with its cave-like opening at the front. At the back, the texture evokes associations with excavated earth layers and pieces of rock. There are also fragments in the bronze that are reminiscent of architecture.
Originally trained as a geologist, Kirkeby's lifelong fascination with the earth is a thread that runs through his extensive oeuvre. He structurally operates on the border between nature and culture. In his landscapes, he uses paint to model the layers of earth that he finds in nature. His bronze sculptures also reflect nature, but his famous brick sculptures echo both the traditional Danish architecture of brick houses (Huset) and the architectural structures of Maya ruins. It is the primal forces of man and nature that attract him and that he makes tangible with great gestures. So too in this giant bronze in The Hague, which is one of his last and certainly his most monumental sculpture ever.