The New Mother Sculptures
An Enveloping Sculptural Experience
From Sunday, the 20th of October, The New Mother Sculptures, an exhibition curated by renowned Dutch artist Ad de Jong, can be seen. It features over fifty sculptures by artists based in the Netherlands, displayed in an immersive, unique environment. With a specially crafted clay floor and soundscape, visitors are invited to experience art in an entirely new way – not just visually, but by engaging all their senses.
Enveloping Experience
The New Mother Sculptures transforms the museum’s upper gallery into a vast, open landscape that offers a captivating way to explore the contemporary artworks. Each sculpture conveys a distinct physical and emotional world – sometimes cursing and screaming, other times tender and warm. These are worlds that defy rational interpretation, encouraging us to simply observe, feel, and exist within them. The exhibition showcases sculptures from both emerging talents and established artists, including tapestries, enchanting iron constructions, a Canta decorated with nitrous oxide canisters, coloured glass bricks, plastic truck tarps, structures made from root tissue, an endless bookshelf, and more. Visitors are encouraged to take off their shoes and explore the exhibition barefoot, without using their phones. The physical contact with the artworks, combined with a mysterious soundscape and the earthy scent of clay infused with seeds, creates an atmosphere of total immersion.
About Ad de Jong
Ad de Jong is a prominent visual artist and curator, and a co-founder of the legendary artist initiative W139. Previous exhibitions he has co-organized, such as BeeldHalWerk, Present Forever, and All Is Giving, have received critical acclaim. In The New Mother Sculptures, De Jong experiments with the boundaries of the museum experience, creating an environment that presents diverse visions for a potential future -a setting where art and the viewer engage with each other in a new way.
Participating Artists
Maria Roosen, Hilke Walraven, Corine Zomer, HW Werther, Annegret Kellner, Yair Callender, Kristine Hymøller, Hester Oerlemans, Henk Visch, Sachi Miyachi, Théophile Blandet, Lisa Sebestikova, Saar Scheerlings, Maya Berkhof, Maaike Kramer, WONNE, Job Koelewijn, Elena Giolo, Diana Scherer, Jonas Ohlsson, Izaak Zwartjes, Arjanne van der Spek, Esther de Graaf, Femmy Otten, Hans van den Ban, Gijs van Poecke, Klaartje van Essen, Laura Canha Malpique, Mickey Yang, Simon Wald-Lasowski, Rens Spanjaard, Ad de Jong, Jordan Herregraven, Loma Doom, Maartje Korstanje, Afra Eisma, Ellen Yiu en Suzanne Plomp.
