THE CONNECTING LINE

Afsluitdijk (NL), 2024

The Afsluitdijk is a 32-kilometer-long protective dam built in the 1930s in the Netherlands. It separates the North Sea from the Zuiderzee, a bay that once covered an area of approximately 5,000 km² and has since become a smaller inland body of water known as the IJsselmeer. The Zuiderzee was formed in the 12th and 13th Centuries as a result of severe storm surges that flooded large areas of land and created a natural access route from the sea to the future port of Amsterdam. As early as the Middle Ages, the Dutch began to protect themselves against floods by building dykes and canals. Windmills were used to pump out water in order to reclaim land. This created a grid-like landscape of dykes, canals, and low-lying plains, known as polders. In 1986, industrially-scaled drainage measures in the IJsselmeer created the 2,500 km² province of Flevoland, which is now home to around 460,000 people.

In these works, the geometric mapping of the polder landscape is placed in relation to the Zuiderzee, a bay which no longer exists. Elements of 20th-century abstract art enter into a pictorial dialogue with 17th-century maritime painting. The works in this series are characterized by complex and multi-layered compositions. In the foreground, individual PVC tubes filled with colored water from the IJsselmeer are stretched across the picture surface. Behind them is a glass plate with an abstract composition in the style of Piet Mondrian, whose geometric arrangement also evokes associations with the cartographic grid structures of polder landscapes. Unpainted areas of the glass surface reveal a wavy mirror mounted behind it. This reflects reproductions of 17th-century seascapes, which have been applied to the back of the glass plates inside old picture frames. The three-dimensional wooden frames create pronounced depth, while the distorted maritime scenes appear as fragmented, fleeting memories from a bygone era.