Heringa / Van Kalsbeek (1966/1962)
Liet Heringa and Maarten van Kalsbeek have worked as a team since 1998 and would no longer want it any other way. ‘It’s just like improvising in music. You have to dare to interrupt and take over the lead from each other,’ says Liet Heringa.* The partnership arose when they were students and Liet went to London for a work placement while Maarten stayed behind in the Netherlands. They sent each other photographs of their work and would comment on the pieces of art by changing something about it and would then send each other a new photograph. This created a situation in which they continually interfered with or added elements to one another’s work. Their working method is closely linked to their source of inspiration: the unpredictability of nature.** Nature is never static, but rather continually moves in a pattern of growth, bloom and decay. The duo has embedded this cyclical process into their working method.
Heringa and Van Kalsbeek experiment with materials and play with compositions and coincidence. Besides bronze, ceramics and porcelain, they also work with materials including synthetic resin, nylon thread and feathers in their sculptures. Their colourful, baroque sculptures look as if they have grown organically. Maarten van Kalsbeek: ‘While we obviously have a plan before we start on a sculpture, we also give a work space to flow, drift or solidify in a way that also takes us by surprise.’
* Quotation: S. Spijkerman, ‘Beelden van on-Hollandse zinnelijke schoonheid’ (‘Images of un-Dutch sensual beauty’), Trouw, 29.08.2001
** Press Release: ‘Heringa/Van Kalsbeek – Cruel Bonsai’, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 01.06.2007
