11 may 2022, Manuela Klerkx
Kröller-Müller launches Hilgemann Fund with financial contribution to purchase six videos by Jeroen Jongeleen
Fortunately, plenty of great things are happening in the world of the arts. One of them is the establishment of the Hilgemann Fund, an initiative by visual artist Ewerdt Hilgemann and his wife and gallerist Antoinette de Stigter, inaugurated on 10 May 2022 at the Kröller-Müller Museum. The fund was created to support 'idiosyncratic sculpture', or spatial art in the broadest sense of the word. Support can take the form of a purchase, an exhibition or a publication. Hilgemann’s goal with the Hilgemann Fund is to ‘give back’ for the rich career he has achieved. Partnering with other artists has always been important to him, as it has for Antoinette de Stigter. In 1989, she opened her gallery Art Affairs in Amsterdam, specialising in international modern art with a strong conceptual slant. The fund is managed by the Kröller-Müller Museum.
About sculptor Ewerdt Hilgemann
From the very start of his career, the work of German sculptor Ewerdt Hilgemann (1938), based in the Netherlands, has been characterised by elementary research. After experimenting in the sixties with subtle, white wooden wall pieces that capture light, he developed into a conceptual sculptor, utilising both natural stone and steel and working with geometric forms in series. In 1980, he introduced randomness and natural forces to in his art, which lead to a working method over which he had less control. But to his surprise, he discovered that even the unpredictable is subject to natural laws, which he was soon able to adapt and anticipate. Is there anything gentler yet more vital to living beings than air? With his work, Hilgemann shows that this very same air is as gentle as it is powerful and able to exert pressure, causing large steel containers to collapse as soon as the air is depleted. That invisible force has become Hilgemann's tool.
Video works by Jeroen Jongeleen: intimate performances in a self-created hamster wheel
The first allocation from the Hilgemann Fund is a financial contribution for the purchase in 2021 of six video works by Jeroen Jongeleen (Apeldoorn, NL, 1967). Jongeleen often works in public spaces. When city parks were closed or had limited access during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Jongeleen decided to reduce his running route to a circle with a diameter of only 12 metres. On empty terrains where he could run – such as roof of his studio building in Rotterdam, the Maasvlakte, Oosterscheldekering in Zeeland or a grassy field enclosed by trees near the Kröller-Müller Museum – he ran his circles, leaving a temporary trail of exertion. A drone filmed the solitary, intimate performances of an artist stuck in a self-created hamster wheel, thus drawing a parallel to the pandemic – created by humans and subsequently imprisoning them.
The presentation of Jeroen Jongeleen’s ‘Running in circles’ can be seen from 12 March through 30 October 2022 at the Kröller-Müller Museum.
