Odapark, Venray
BEWAAR / BEWARE ZIMMER
January 25 – April 21, 2025
In early December 2024, Ans Verdijk moved the entire contents of her studio in Beugen to Odapark. In the garden room, she composed a web of works that visitors can explore starting January 25, 2025. Curator Joep Vossebeld describes his encounter with Ans Verdijk's work.
It's worth mentioning upfront that Ans Verdijk was the first artist I ever met. For years, Ans taught in the foundation and preparatory programs of the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts. Until recently, she introduced young people, often teenagers, to the world of art. She showed that artworks take many forms, unlike a painting or a sculpture. Above all, she demonstrated how you can fill your life with art, surround yourself with it daily, and make it the guiding principle of everything you do. Only much later did I, and probably generations of students with me, realize that Ans deviated from the prevailing views in art education. A minimalist formal language often went hand in hand with a well-developed intellectual concept.
Ans brought a different sound, starting from the moment she walked in. The combination of clothing and jewelry was carefully chosen each time, often a colorful blend of her own creations and those of fellow artists. It was a statement: less is more?[1] That's not the case here! The artists Ans Verdijk taught also followed that philosophy. Art that wasn't meant to be a milestone for eternity, but as ephemeral and organic as life itself.[2] It could be inconspicuously small, or monumentally large, weighty, tragic, or theatrical, but also lighthearted and celebratory. As a teacher, she had a clear signature, but what she created as an artist? I had no idea.
Three years ago, I approached Ans Verdijk for an interview. The plan was to focus primarily on her studio and the works she created there. We began the conversation at the living room table, drinking tea. Ans spoke at length about her work. However, the studio door remained closed. "No, that's really not possible," Ans said when I asked. "What happens in there is really mine alone. Not even my partner is allowed in there." So it became a studio visit to a closed door. How large her workspace was, whether it was full or empty, whether there was daylight or deep darkness; I could only guess. But through Ans's stories, the studio slowly took shape in my mind, with each word, more fragments emerging from the fog.
Last year, Ans suddenly called: "I thought, maybe I should give it a try. Share what I'm doing in there with others. If you'd like, you can come take a look sometime." A few days later, we were sitting in the living room again with a cup of tea. Then Ans walked into the hallway and opened the door to her studio. I stepped inside cautiously; there wasn't much room to move. I slowly glanced around the room once, and for a moment, I didn't understand what was happening to me; tears stung my eyes. I don't think Ans saw that that afternoon. She stood in the doorway waiting, probably still too nervous to look at me. Why did that affect me so much?
Because at first glance, it's mostly a lot. Everywhere, there are little things standing, hanging, and leaning against each other, often broken, gathered together in a tangle of odds and ends[3] and odds and ends. Just as children, along with the forest ranger, dissect an owl pellet to decipher from the ball of hair and feathers what the owl has consumed, you can also explore this space. What do you find? Pretty much everything we carry with us as humans throughout our lives. A web of paper, clay, textiles, yarn, corks, tableware, plaster, hair, tools, figurines, photos, words, clothing. For Ans, the works have a lot to do with memory, and how we preserve our memories. After all, memories can be linked to the people we know, but also to objects in our home, to a smell, a specific place, a number, a taste, a word. And we have little control over how and why a particular memory is triggered.
In December 2024, Ans Verdijk moved the contents of her studio into the garden room at Odapark. After a day of unpacking, the space already exudes the atmosphere of her studio. We spoke there on a misty morning about her work.
Ans: "What you see here are actually all translations of things you've seen before. A tool or clothing, but it could also be a dish. That's then mixed in a different setting with yet another memory. In fact, everything you have on and around you as a human being, or what you've absorbed during your life, I've created in this world. It's a constant shift in the shapes of things and the connections they have. Just like memories constantly change form. It's actually just like in my brain; the things I've seen form connections with something else. It also has a lot to do with fog, those memories, because they slowly become foggy, distort, and sometimes are no longer recognizable. You recognize a scent or a voice, but you can't remember what it's from."
Written in bold letters on a screen or piece of paper, the title BEWAAR / BEWARE ZIMMER might seem a bit difficult to fathom. Three words in three different languages. As Ans reads the title aloud to me, it becomes clear that she places the words together in the same way she places the works in her exhibition. The words have meaning, a past, and associations, but these are fluid. Ans seems to savor the words as she speaks, as if searching for new flavors and therefore possibilities. She connects "Bewaren" and "Beware" both to the exhibition space full of works (storage room) and to the caution with which visitors will navigate through it: Beware! In her words, the German word "Zimmer" (room) quickly becomes a voice or stemmer, but equally a shimmer: a glimmer or twinkle. Something that suddenly lights up amidst the crowd. As if a light bulb has been switched on briefly. Ans Verdijk: “That's the atmosphere I want to evoke. It makes you feel like someone is still here, or they've just left, but contact is still possible. Like a ghost, someone who still wanders around and triggers your associations. There are a lot of broken things here, but those broken things already form connections with other objects, form a new network. I also understand that some visitors will mainly think, "It's all so much, and how are you going to tidy it all away later?" Yes, it is a lot, but at the same time, this is also one work you're looking at, and in that sense, very compact. Like a brain. It's a brain, how a brain functions, how you make connections, how things emerge in your mind, and what you then do with them.”
Perhaps that was what struck me so deeply when I walked into Ans's studio that day. The moving glimpse into another person's mind, the vulnerability of letting others in. At the same time, there was also recognition. Forgotten memories suddenly reactivated. The feeling that not everything that disappears is gone forever; sometimes it can resurface in unexpected places and moments. Things disappear into the mist, but sometimes the mist gives something back. And for a moment, it is yours.
[1] "Less is more": A statement attributed to architect Mies van der Rohe, known for his clean, formal designs. The statement was later countered by designer and fashion icon Iris Apfel: "Less is a bore."
[2] Ans Verdijk: “What I do isn't for eternity. For me, it's about the research, the discovery, the amazement, the what's happening here, what's happening here? A kind of cloud that you pierce and then it's gone again.”
[3] after Friedrich Fröbel, the founder of the first kindergarten in 1837. He called the school Kindergarten, as a garden where children were given space to grow.
COLOPHON
BEWAAR / BEWARE ZIMMER
January 25 – April 21, 2025
Composition : Ans Verdijk and Joep Vossebeld
Organization : Hester van Tongerlo
Text : Joep Vossebeld
Graphic design : Inge Korten
Made possible by :
Mondrian Fund
Province of Limburg
Municipality of Venray
