Evergreen: Cindy Bakker

Galerie Bart is proud to present Cindy Bakker (1989, NL) in the first garden exhibition of 2023, Evergreen. Cindy’s gaze is focused on functionally designed objects that appear all around us: traffic signs, orange PVC tubes on construction sites or green trash cans along the A2 highway. These industrial objects speak a universal language with their shape and color, but are only designed from their function. Red is danger; yellow means beware! In doing so, the objects create a collective pattern of expectations. These conventions and objects evoke in Cindy, an experience that oscillates from recognition to alienation and back again. She unravels her relationships with the banal in her work by stripping these objects of their status as mass-produced products and by making them, very briefly, unique and special. She sees the world as a theater of objects and considers herself a set designer, who transforms situations into awkward, humorous sets.

This time Cindy has the gallery garden at her disposal to build her set. Green and blooming, the garden contrasts sharply with the bright paint colours and designs of her usual inspirations. Her reaction to this change of scenery? Topiary art! The British boxwood gardens, the zen gardens of Japan, the gardens of Versailles. Each have large, green elemental shapes cut from plants. Cindy says: “It inspires me, as a maker, that there is a need to cut something that grows naturally into sculptural forms. As if man wants to shape nature, bend it to his will. As a result, it often feels like an artificial and unreal world and balances between beauty and absurdity.” Cindy brings this sense of wonder at the “evergreen” sculptures to Galerie Bart’s garden.

Last winter Cindy Bakker presented her site-specific work called PLAY at Kunsthal Rotterdam. This is an installation of 36 objects. As part of Amsterdam Art Week, we are presenting 12 of these objects in our gallery.