Bert Teunissen
dal 29/9/2007 al 9/2/2008
Segnalato da
Museum Haus Lange und Haus Esters
29/9/2007
Bert Teunissen
Museum Haus Lange und Haus Esters, Krefeld
A Portrait of Europeans at Home. The title of the exhibition, Domestic Landscapes, points not only to the almost panoramic format of the works, which always show a whole, but also to the kinds of rooms that are formed by a specially cultivated domestic setting, in which the protagonists spend the majority of their lives: living rooms, kitchens, work rooms.
Domestic Landscapes
One day in 1996 while visiting Castelnau in the south of France, the Dutch
photographer Bert Teunissen (born 1959 in Ruurlo) chanced upon an old café where the
sunlight on the veranda was shining into a large kitchen with red and white floor
tiles. Fitted out with simple furniture and an open hearth, the atmosphere in this
room instantly conjured up the rooms of his childhood, and the house he was forced
to leave at the age of nine because it was to be demolished. The photograph of the
old lady who has assumed her place in the middle of this ambience was to be first of
a sustained series that has now occupied the photographer for over ten years and
grown to number more than 350 works.
The title Domestic Landscapes points not only to the almost panoramic format of the
works, which always show a whole, but also to the kinds of rooms that are formed by
a specially cultivated domestic setting, in which the protagonists spend the
majority of their lives: living rooms, kitchens, work rooms. Since Castelnau,
Teunissen has set out to find more such rooms, which distinguish themselves in that
they all manage with natural daylight, having been built before electric lighting
was properly installed. In the meantime, this search has taken the photographer to
nine European countries.
In point of fact there can be no mistaking the regional differences in the
iconography of the everyday objects. It is also evident that the things that are
grouped around the inhabitants of these rooms have long since established their own
set places in these domestic landscapes. They are unshakeable elements of an
ambience that conveys a duration that cannot be thought of in linear terms, but
comes from the constant repetition of daily routine. In keeping with this,
Teunissen's photographs may be compared with the paintings of Vermeer or Pieter de
Hooch. The inhabitants, mostly older people, look at us with calm composure, their
gazes containing the amassed experience of life spent far from the metropolises.
Teunissen looks for these gazes, for they mark the spiritual middle point from which
the cohesion of the ambience radiates.
As clearly as the photographs describe the regional differences, it is just as
surprising how much light they cast on the points in common of a generation in
Europe that was born before World War II, and that helped to construct the new
Europe. Rooted in country life and worlds apart from the burgeoning EU farming
regulations - it is also a generation on the verge of disappearance; their children
and grandchildren have long since made their homes elsewhere and adjusted to the
globalised economy. Seen in this light, Teunissen's series Domestic Landscapes is a
priceless archive of European life prior to globalisation, which is etched into the
collective memory of our times.
Museum Haus Lange und Haus Esters
Wilhelmshofallee 91-97 - Krefeld
Tues-Sun 11am-5pm