Willem de Haan enjoys adding artificial elements to everyday reality in order to make you see your surroundings with fresh eyes. His sculptures and installations often seem to come straight from a film set or stage production. Especially for the temporary clubhouse of the Kite Club at Voorlinden, he collaborated with these fellow artists to create the kite For Sale.
What’s your experience with kites?
‘As a child I definitely flew kites, but I’d never made one before. From a graphic point of view, I think it’s a fantastic medium. The frame alone has a beautiful interplay of lines. And those blocks of colour, you can really go wild with them. What I especially liked was figuring out how to relate to such a familiar object. Everyone knows kites, we’ve all grown up with them, but what do I do with one? I also really enjoy the challenge of working with a completely different medium. Stepping outside your comfort zone and figuring out how to move within new circumstances, that excites me.’
And how did it go?
‘I usually work more from the object, and a kite is essentially a flat surface. So I really had to think about it. What could I do? How would this fit into my practice? I had all sorts of ideas, but you also have to consider the technical challenge; the thing actually needs to fly. Luckily, Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes from the Kite Club helped me. Without them, it wouldn’t have worked. In my first sketches, for instance, the string was on the wrong side, even though a kite needs to catch the wind in a specific way. Maurice and Liesbeth were fantastic, I could just call out, “I want this!” and they’d get to work, trying things out until it worked, no matter how impossible my idea seemed. I’d be shouting things like “I want it even pointier!” or “The sign needs to be less flat, more angular!” That’s how I normally work too, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s what makes it fun.’
You turned the kite into a kind of ‘For Sale’ sign. How did that come about?
‘I was walking with a friend through Antwerp Nieuw-Zuid, past all the building sites. At one point she pointed to the sky and said, “That bit of sky there, I’ve bought that.” She’d bought an apartment in a building that hadn’t even been built yet. And that’s fascinating; she had essentially bought a piece of air. We stood there staring at that bit of sky, trying to imagine where her flat would be. A few cubic metres of air, and it’s hers now.
A lot of my work is about pressure on public space. That feels like a very Dutch theme, along with this obsession with efficiency; we’re even allocating empty air as someone’s property. That’s something I like to reflect on in my work, and the kite is the perfect medium to physically claim that space, to ‘hijack’ the sky. That’s how I came up with the idea of a ‘For Sale’ sign hanging in mid-air.’
Is the kite finished now?
‘No, definitely not. After the Voorlinden adventure, I’m planning to fly it over a construction site, to suspend it above a future apartment that doesn’t yet exist. In a lot of my work, I seek a dialogue between object and surroundings. I want my objects to contribute something to a space. So for me, the kite isn’t complete until it’s really floating above such a future home.’
Do you think you’ll work with kites again?
‘Oh, I definitely see more kite potential. I don’t have a list of kite projects lined up just yet, but something has clicked in my head. There’s just so much you can do with kites. I noticed it especially when walking through Maurice and Liesbeth’s studio; my brain immediately kicked into gear, I started seeing all sorts of new possibilities. So yes, something’s definitely been sparked.’
Want to see more kites? Take a look at the Kite Club’s Instagram page.
Header: Kite Club by Ruud Baan