Kite Club

Bertjan Pot, Liesbeth Abbenes and Maurice Scheltens are established artists in their own right – Bertjan a designer, Liesbeth and Maurice a still-life photography duo. But together, they’ve turned a casual pastime into a museum-worthy art form: making single‐line kites. For them, it’s the ultimate design challenge and highly addictive. ‘I feel there’s real euphoria in the making process; I want to savour it for as long as possible’, admits Liesbeth. ‘And it’s pure magic when your creation is lifted by the wind’, adds Maurice. ’Kite-flying is freedom – bold, elegant, yet with a hint of menace. That contrast makes it endlessly fascinating’, he concludes. This summer you can catch the Kite Club in action at Voorlinden, with sewing machines, testing and showing kites in the museum and on the estate.

Director Suzanne Swarts: ‘The kite-virus is about to sweep through Voorlinden, and I can’t wait! It will be one big, colourful celebration of fun and creativity in and around the museum.’

Expert Kite Clinic
The scale of the Kite Club’s output is nothing short of gigantic. Bertjan and Maurice have been making kites since childhood, and Liesbeth now also churns them out one after another. ‘Kite-flying itself is hugely enjoyable – and so is making them; I simply can’t stop’, laughs Bertjan. They’re keen to share this joy with as many people as possible. ‘Where I’m normally protective of my design work, I’m completely open about how we build our kites’, explains Bertjan. ‘That’s why at Voorlinden you can watch us at work and drop-in with your questions about kites. If you’ve made a kite that won’t fly properly, bring it along and we’ll see if we can fix it.’ The Kite Club has also just published the book One Single Kite, in which they guide readers step-by-step through the kite-making process.

Liesbeth Abbenes: ‘Designing a kite gives you an enormous sense of freedom; it’s a platform for your ideas, and you can experiment endlessly with materials and construction.’

Prospective Members
Bertjan, Liesbeth and Maurice form the core of the Kite Club, but aspirant members often join in to make kites too. Their clubhouse at Voorlinden will be surrounded by kites of their own and those by fellow artists such as Andreas Samuelsson, Hansje van Halem, Joost Jansen, FreelingWaters (Gijs Frieling and Job Wouters) and Simone Post, who is currently exhibiting Sweet Memories at Voorlinden. During their residency, artists Klaas Kloosterboer, Johannes Langkamp and Willem de Haan, Hang Youth frontman Abel van Gijlswijk and fashion designer Anouk Beckers will also drop by to make and display kites.

Maurice Scheltens: ‘Anyone can make a kite and everyone can see it up in the air. That makes kite-flying an extraordinarily accessible art form.’

A Long Tradition of Kite-Making
The Kite Club is invited around the globe to show their kites – most recently by Gucci during Milan Design Week. They follow in a long line of artists who have designed kites – going back all the way to Leonardo da Vinci – such as Yayoi Kusama, Karel Appel and Daniel Buren, who have all ventured into airborne art. Kite-flying itself is ancient—the earliest depiction of a kite dates to around 9,000 BC—and it’s practised everywhere from China to Brazil. The Netherlands too has a storied kite tradition, immortalised in everyday sayings like ‘that kite won’t fly’.

Bertjan Pot: ‘With a kite you can incorporate everything I love about design: form, material, texture, pattern, image, technique, construction and play. Few objects allow for all that. My favourite object to design and create is, without doubt, a kite.’

Line-up
Discover which artists and makers will be appearing at the Kite Club clubhouse in Voorlinden:

• Sunday 20 July: fashion designers Merel Wickers & Kim Leemans
• Monday 21 July: artist Arne Hendriks
• Tuesday 22 July: designer Gijs Bakker
• Wednesday 23 July: fashion designer Anouk Beckers & Hang Youth frontman Abel van Gijlswijk
• Thursday 24 July: designer Roel Wouters
• Saturday 26 July: artist Klaas Kloosterboer
• Sunday 27 July: photographer & kite maker Tim Johannis
• Tuesday 29 July: artist Willem de Haan
• Wednesday 30 July: art director Peter Hebbing (specialist in Japanese and Korean paper kites)
• Thursday 31 July: designer Marjolein Fase
• Friday 1 August: artist Johannes Langkamp
• Saturday 2 August: designer Lex Pott

About the Kite Club
Since 2022, Bertjan Pot (1975), Liesbeth Abbenes (1970) and Maurice Scheltens (1972) have formed the Kite Club, having first admired each other’s kites on Instagram. Bertjan designs furniture, lamps, masks and textiles; his work is in museum collections including the Victoria & Albert in London, Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and MoMA in New York. The duo Scheltens & Abbenes have been collaborating since 2001 and rank among the Netherlands’ most progressive contemporary still-life photographers, working for fashion and design houses such as Humanrace by Pharrell Williams, Paco Rabanne, Maison Margiela, COS and Hermès, and publications like The Gentlewoman, Fantastic Man and MacGuffin. They won the ICP Infinity Award in New York for still-life photography.

Header image: Ruud Baan