< Waanja > || April 2016 ||

<Waanja> has been always interested in the marginal facets of daily life and transferred these into the context of an exhibition space. His ever growing curiosity about the public space has developed after his moving to Amsterdam in 2002. While in the Netherlands the  public domain is flooded by works of art (something that in other countries sounds completely unbelievable) he interprets as art marginal, ephemeral and unintentional phenomena he encounters in the city streets. This accidental ‘public art’ he brings to a space reserved for art.

His curious gaze has focused already a several years ago on three phenomena: abstract compositions resulting from the unintentional reinterpretation of the street markings by the pavers; wooden additons to the architecture that are meant to make the intended function of the building possible despite a more or less temporary disfunctionality; another temporary phenomena are ephemeral sculptures that grow on a public parking space in orther to prevent others from parking there. Such a description of these three series makes the works sound a bit like a practical joke suitable for Facebook. However, there are several serious issues he lightheartedly deals with: what constitutes the work of art? How important is our knowledge in seeing something as a work of art? In what way is the creative process channeled? To whom belongs the public domain and who decides what it’d look like?

The interventions <waanja> records are a specific sort of public art – made by public without the intention of being art. It is the artist’s look that chooses and his knowledge that labels something as art. But only the documentation is not enough. The process is completed only when these public works are brought (back) into a safe haven of an exhibition space in which, by a matter of additions, they become a spacious intervention in itself.