Wouter van der Laan

'Spinning Bee (PARK 2023)', 2023

Mixed media installation

Various dimensions

The space resembles a traditional informal textile workspace, based on historical examples of communal textile gatherings that were common in Medieval Europe. As a kind of late-Medieval night-life, these gatherings offered a platform both for the learning and sharing of textile crafts, as well as a place for story telling; collective singing; relaxation; courting; and much more. Gathered around the hearth, one could find a place for refuge from paternal supervision and control, and as such allowed for a countercultural and subversive potential to emerge.

'Spinning Bee (RijksOpen 2022)', 2022

Mixed media installation

Various dimensions

A late medieval woodcut print depicts a village spinning bee spun out of control. At the time, it was distributed as propaganda, showing a moralistic speculation of the unruly orgiastic events that the authorities imagined took place at the local spinning bees. These textile gatherings were notorious for their transgression of norms, and indeed offered nightly refuge from paternal supervision for the (young) villagers to engage in social, sexual and other forms of communal experimentation. As such, it offered a place for countercultural and subversive potential. These bees eventually got prohibited, pushing them underground and into obscurity, continuing in the dark of night. In the absence of any textile facilities at the Rijksakademie, an impromptu textile workshop has been set up, following the tradition of the nightly village spinning bee. Communal touch-based textile processes facilitate unruly entanglements. Moments of weaving and spinning are met with forms of informal knowledge production and exchange. The space is a breeding ground for the knotting of various lines of thought, threads and bodies. At night these are expressed through touch rather than vision.

'Phantom Limbs (RijksOpen 2021)', 2021

Mixed Media installation (with reproductions of: Michael Thonet's #14 bent wood chair; Allesandro Algardi's 'Young Satyr with Mask of Silenus'; Vladimir Nabokov's butterfly net; Katarzyna Kobro's 'Spatial Composition #4'; 'Something Foul in Flappieville' Hand puppet from 'Murder, She Wrote'; Samuel Beckett's tree in 'Waiting for Godot'; 'Wendy's Western Coat' from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'; drawing of the 'Hammersmith Ghost'; a Whisperer mask from 'The Walking Dead'; and a found reproduction of 'The Ghost Story' by Charles Giroux after Walter McEwen from the Rijksakademie Collections).

Through a series of (re)makings of carefully chosen ‘ghostly’ objects I tried to access a transference of knowledge that resides within the objects and their distinct materialities; a kind of close study through replication as internalisation. In this process I remade and was remade, the ghostly objects acting through me as a Chimera of phantom limbs.

'Nest Paintings', 2019

Oil, acrylics, pencil, laser print transfer and ink on canvas

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.

'Nest #4 (Omstand)', 2018

Mixed media installation

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.

'Nest #3 (Rianne Groen Gallery)', 2018

Mixed media installation

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.

'Nest #2 (Aa-kerk)', 2017

Mixed media installation

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.

'Nest #1 (Green Room)', 2017

Mixed media installation

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.

'Nesting Period', 2017

Mixed media installation

Variable dimensions

Nest is a nomadic installation for which I moved my entire studio interior to various locations in order to renegotiate everything brought along in relation to what was encountered along the way. Every new situation meant a rigorous reformulation of my work, archive, and routine into ever-changing provisional configurations.