Foundation Art and Public Space
Gert Rietveld
,
Diederik Klomberg
The Optical Laboratory
artist:
Rietveld
,
Klomberg
located in:
Brede School Tolhek
,
client:
Gemeente Pijnacker-Nootdorp
For the Brede School in Pijnacker Diederik Klomberg created a children’s ‘look and perceive laboratory’. Through this work Klomberg investigates the phenomenon of perception in all its facets. The convex mirror that was fitted on the rough stone facade of the building can be seen from a far distance. Like a magic eye this mirror, titled ‘Pupil’, summarizes its surroundings. For the empty space in between the two elementary schools, Klomberg - in collaboration with Gert Rietveld - developed a gallery of periscopes. When the viewer looks through them, he becomes disoriented. This is caused by the added mirror constructions that distort one’s visual direction.
The dome, which features a concave mirror as a roof and is located on the smaller children’s courtyard, acts as a magnifying glass and additionally amplifies the sounds made by the children who sit beneath it. The lenticular photographs – i.e. photographs that have been superimposed on each other - that hang above the doors of every classroom focus on the perception of time and movement and feature the students running, swimming, turning head over heels and building toy towers etc. By looking at the photographs from different angles one continuously perceives different poses of the children within the same image. (DL/VH)
