Flanders today APRIL 11, 2012
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The devil and the deep blue sea The Flemish coast turns art gallery for Beaufort04 Lisa Bradshaw
Beaufort happens every three years, but this year’s edition will make you long for it more often. Having built up a reputation over 12 years, the art parcours boasts 30 works by Europe’s best and brightest. It’s a highlight of Flanders’ year in arts.
E
ight artists, 50 metres and 10 degrees below zero. Strolling along the glorious dunes of the undeveloped coastline just outside of Wenduine on this warm spring day, it’s hard to imagine how the group of international artists, led by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande, completed the job in four weeks last February. “Sandworm” is a 50-metre long curved tunnel of hand-woven willow branches. It reaches 10 metres high and wide at its centre. Yet it’s still more impressive seen from the inside than from a distance. When you visit “Sandworm”, do so on a sunny day, when the light coming through the cracks falls down around you in jagged streams. It’s like a cathedral sprung organically from the dunes. That’s just the impression Casagrande wants to give; an eco-architect, his work focuses on the environmental impact of architecture and an elimination of waste. “We wanted to avoid that after the exhibition, the work just becomes garbage,” explains Nikita Wu, Casagrande’s wife and one of the artists who built “Sandworm”. “This material will just return to nature.” She admits however that the below-freezing temperatures made it “a physically demanding experience”. But one the artists almost relished, she says, because “it really was like man against nature. Who will win?” When I visited, there were children playing inside “Sandworm”, and we were hard-pressed to get our group of adults to move on, too. The way the work blends into the environment and will leave no trace of itself when it disappears in the autumn suggests it’s a win-win situation.
Art without concessions
“Sandworm” is one of 30 works of art – many monumental – that dot the Flemish coast until the end of September as part of Beaufort04, the international art parcours triennial that attracts more attention from artists and from the public with each new edition. Now in its fourth edition, “Beaufort has reached maturity,” says curator Philip Van den Bossche, also the director of Ostend museum Mu.ZEE. Beaufort is seen as a way to get more tourists to the coast from April to September, but municipalities have in the past had concerns about the avant-garde level of some of the works chosen. Now, “the attitude of the participating coastal cities has become more open to dialogue,” notes Van den Bossche. “We do not make any artistic concessions. We hope to introduce art to visitors who have never seen the inside of a museum. I hope some of the works will raise questions or even agitate people. As long as they are not left ``continued on page 3