Dimensions 84 x 118 cm
Material Truck tarpaulin, Hair
Jan Jansen originals Various clogs (1970-1990)
Material Truck tarpaulin, Hair
Jan Jansen originals Various clogs (1970-1990)
Albert van der Weide has been making drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs and other interdisciplinary projects since 1976. He writes a column for Arnhem aan Zee since 2009. Has worked as tutor and member of the board from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and was a guest lecturer in New York, China and Japan. He was dean from the Academy Minerva, Frank Mohr Instituut an the Academy for Pop Culture in Groningen and head of School Fine Art from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam for 12 years.
His desire to create is deeply rooted in his mostly conceptual work. He always works from concrete experiences, which can be clearly seen in his work. It’s based on engagement and research, Albert finds inspiration all around him: ‘the world is my studio’.
Van der Weide’s work is displayed in a rich variety of places, ranging from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to Indonesia, India and China. His work has been included in collections of leading museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Within Dutch borders, his work can be seen in the Textile Museum in Tilburg, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Museum Arnhem and the Kröller-Müller museum in Otterlo.
To Van der Weide, shoes were both something you interact with on a daily basis for a lifetime yet at the same time something that felt so foreign to him.
His natural curiosity led him to researching shoes in general, which enabled him to distinguish certain areas of shoe design and understand Jansen’s greatness better. The process that followed was very associative: Albert questioned aspects of shoe design. How is a shoe made? How could one define a shoe? What is a shoe if one has never seen a shoe before? What kind of object would it be?
A large part of the artist’s work comes to life while trying and thinking. Van der Weide asked himself: how can I take the functionality out of the shoe whilst leaving the functional appearance intact?
By removing functionality, it becomes autonomous – yet it would have to remain a shoe visually.
By removing functionality, it becomes autonomous – yet it would have to remain a shoe visually.
Albert took his work outside. Outside Arnhem’s Central railway Station, he placed Jansen’s shoes on the pavement and interacted with bystanders and passers-by. He chose the station as he found it a beautiful metaphor for travelling from A to B.
This is something that is very characteristic to Albert’s work: everything always seems to come together. The moment he sets out to have a conversation, Albert shares his knowledge and receives new information. At the same time, a newspaper article does a deep dive on clogs from the Middle Ages. When he meets Jan Jansen to discuss the project, he is intrigued by the way Jansen handles the shoe: he sees the lifelong experience in his hands. To him, it combined a very practical touch and a mix of love, respect and magic. All these aspects and details are stored in Van der Weide’s mind and come together in the process.
Bit by bit, Van der Weide experiments with how much can be done to the shoe whilst it clearly remains a shoe. In the end, Albert has transformed 10 shoes into autonomous objects, yet succeeded in them being a family of shoes. These shoes are made for thinking.