03 september 2024, Wouter van den Eijkel
The studio of... Bart Lunenburg
The annual Lustwarande exhibition is currently open in Tilburg's Oude Warande forest park. This year's theme is Arbos – Wood in Contemporary Sculpture and one of the participating artists is Bart Lunenburg, a logical choice since Lunenburg thinks and works with wood.
Lunenburg (NL, 1995) usually develops his exhibitions in dialogue with the building, location or environment in which his work is displayed. For Lustwarande, he created Support for a Glorified Ceiling, a life-sized sculpture where a roof truss appears to rise from the forest floor. As a visitor, you witness the different stages of the construction of this roof truss.
The idea for this truss was inspired by various vanished or never-realised wooden structures in and around De Oude Warande, making it feel like a ghostly sculptural resurrection amid fallen trees.
The Lustwarande exhibition in Tilburg is open until 6 October. More visitor information can be found on the Lustwarande website.
Bart Lunenburg, Support for a Glorified Ceiling, Galerie Caroline O'Breen
Where is your studio and what does it look like?
My studio serves two purposes. To start, it’s a place where I spend a lot of time reading, writing and doing historical research. The walls are covered with found images: archival photos, architectural drawings, art-historical references and observations from public spaces. My studio is a place to reflect on my site visits or archives that I’m going through, a space where new connections and associations emerge from all these different types of reference materials. On the other hand, it is a sort of woodworking shop with various machines for woodworking, mainly for building models. Tools are scattered everywhere and there are models of new sculptures as well as installations from previous projects. After doing some research, the saw tables are put to work and the space transforms into a workshop that more closely resembles a woodworking shop.
I’m currently working from my studio in an industrial area of Utrecht, but in two months’ time, I’ll be moving into a new space in Zaandam at a complex that includes a communal woodworking shop, which is fantastic because it will make it easier for me to work on a larger scale.
What are your minimum requirements for a studio and what’s nice to have, but not absolutely necessary?
I always need at least one large wall. I often surround myself with various reference materials that I hang on the walls for a while. Even if you’re not consciously looking at it, you still take it in. By combining reference materials that initially seem unrelated, new starting points emerge. A comfortable chair and a large wall are definitely minimum requirements. Of course, lots of space is also important, as for many artists. The space where you work dictates in a sense the scale of your work. Natural daylight is also very important to me. Changing light in the room allows me to see a work in progress with fresh eyes. Sometimes, a shadow will suddenly fall over a sculpture, making it feel just right or bringing new insight.
Bart Lunenburg, Nest, 2023, Galerie Caroline O'Breen
How would you describe your approach? I’m asking because unlike many of your colleagues, there is an architectural and cultural-historical research component to your work.
I would describe it as a duality between historical research and an artistic, sculptural practice, as I’ve mentioned earlier. A lot of architectural-historical research always precedes a work but in the end, that research often leads to an abstract, autonomous piece. Once the work is finished, it’s open to interpretation and visitors to an exhibition don’t necessarily need to see exactly what I tried to convey. But lately, I’ve been trying to make that process more accessible to my audience through artist statements and essays.
The exhibitions I develop are usually in dialogue with the building, location or environment where the work is displayed. They are always informed by art and architectural history, by ideas that an architect intended to embody in a building and by the social layers and rituals that are added to a structure over time. I try to give material form to the life of a building. Of course, at the end of the day, I’m not a historian but a visual artist. All that preliminary research can lead to abstract work and new associations.
What does the beginning phase of a project look like? Do you walk around a particular region looking for distinctive architectural elements, like shutters or a steeple, or do you spend a lot of time in libraries and archives?
It’s actually a combination of both. At the start of a project, I find a lot of information in libraries and archives, reading academic papers, studying construction reports, digging through old books and listening to stories from (amateur) historians. But ultimately, there’s only so much knowledge you can gain from written sources. Architecture remains a physical experience, so I always have to go out and experience a building or area in person. The value of visual art lies in that sensory experience and personal observation.
At the end of the day, I’m not an architectural historian. Even small personal experiences of people living with a particular building can provide a starting point for a new work. This also helps to discover whether an architect’s ideas work as intended or if life has different plans for a building. Although my work is informed by history and stories, it must ultimately be associative and empirical. It needs to add something to the existing jargon and poetic freedom comes into play there.
Bart Lunenburg, Study (Building as a Sandal) no. 3, 2022, Galerie Caroline O'Breen
A notable aspect of your work is that the architectural references usually don’t refer to urban environments, but rather to rural or religious settings (like Katherijne Convent and the Bossche School). Is this intentional?
How interesting that you noticed that! Perhaps it has something to do with my Christian upbringing. I think I’m often drawn to architecture that seems to stand above time, buildings that may have originated in a particular era but ultimately represent something more universal and profound.
My work is actually more about what the architecture represents than the architecture itself. I find it fascinating how a building serves as a vessel, how rituals and certain social layers grow over the structure over time, how time takes hold of a building material.
I’m also often looking for a notion of the passage of time, a certain kind of stillness. These themes may be more quickly found in rural or religious architecture. That said, I also regularly work with urban environments, but a building often needs to have a life of its own for me to engage with it: a renovation, a change in function or some other significant event. I’m often searching for social and architectural layers that have become invisible over time or buried in the use of the building.
The projects I find most successful don’t focus so much on history itself but on the present. It’s interesting to think about what history says about the way we view it in our own time.
Your work is currently featured at the Lustwarande 2024 exhibition in Tilburg, entitled Arbos – Wood in Contemporary Sculpture. That theme seems tailor-made for you, as your sculptures are made of wood and the models you photograph are also made of wood. What work are you showing there?
For Lustwarande, I developed a new sculptural piece entitled Support for a Glorified Ceiling (2024). It’s a life-sized work where a roof truss appears to rise from the forest floor. The exhibition visitor sees the different stages of the construction of this truss, which is enhanced by a transition from dark to light in the oakwood structure. The truss, inspired by various vanished or never-realised wooden structures in and around the forest park of De Oude Warande in Tilburg, is like a ghostly sculptural resurrection amidst fallen trees. The theme of wood in contemporary sculpture was a perfect match for this. Wood is the material I primarily work with. It forms the basis of my models, which then expand into other media, such as photography, sculpture and installations. I also do a lot of research in my work on wood-building traditions and the cultural history associated with certain tree species.
Bart Lunenburg, Tumulus, 2023, Galerie Caroline O'Breen
Is there an architectural element you would like to work with, but haven’t yet due to a lack of time or for production reasons?
I’ve created several works that explore the relationship between building and weaving and inspire the textile origins of construction. But hand-weaving on a loom is incredibly labour-intensive. That’s why I’d be very curious to try out these techniques on a larger scale, perhaps using machinery or in collaboration with skilled weavers.
What are you currently working on?
Right now, I’m fully engaged in creating two exhibitions in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In April and May, I spent two months there conducting research on the work of Jože Plečnik (1872-1957), a national hero and designed much of Ljubljana’s city centre.
In October, my solo exhibition will be opening at the Plečnik House, his former architect’s residence, which has been converted into a museum. In his former rooms, I’m developing several new installations and series that explore Plečnik’s work and quirks through his relationship with the trees in Ljubljana and the Slovenian beekeeping culture. For example, Plečnik used plane trees and poplars to create new promenades and sightlines in the city, but also to shield buildings that didn’t align with his artistic vision from public view. These stories form the basis for new sculptures and photo series that abstractly investigate this almost political relationship with different tree species.
The other exhibition is also opening in October at RAVNIKAR, the Slovenian gallery I’ve been working with for the past two years.
Bart Lunenburg, The Healer #14 (cloth / thyme), 2022, Galerie Caroline O'Breen
