Cees de Boer - Knowledge of nature

Basing himself on three art projects, Cees de Boer shows how knowledge and learning are brought into action in order to make the experience of the work of art more intense. To this end, the artist not only deploys the public as participant, but also becomes himself more and more a part of the ecological system that he investigates and makes visible in his work. In the Abri that Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas made for the Prof. Van der Leeuw Foundation in Wijk aan Zee in 1995, the spectator is given the opportunity to become totally absorbed in individually experiencing sounds received by a dish antenna. In Herman de Vries’ Tuindorp collections for a housing development near Tilburg, an extensive collection of trees and shrubs becomes a sort of mat for the neighbourhood. Knowledge and experience of nature are thus introduced into an environment which otherwise admits of no connection at all. In the Sanctuarium that de Vries was commissioned by De Verbeelding to realise for the Artificial natural networks event in Zeewolde, nature is given a sanctuary where it can follow its own laws undisturbed. Managing and intervening in this area is made impossible; man is kept at a distance, and is left with the job of witnessing the process, which is what nature essentially is.