Dear Shaded Viewers & Diane,
The main subject of Dutch artist Rik Dijkhuizen’s summer residence research has been the emotions of water, everything from its movement to its management. Dijkhuizen’s installation just opened at Hotel Maria Kapel (HMK) in Hoorn, a small city just thirty minutes away from Amsterdam.
The chapel where the full length, shallow pool is exhibited is host to the same transparent belief and curative properties offered since the fifteenth century when it was first built. The building moved through Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation before finally becoming property of the arts. Under full hygienic control, visitors are allowed to sit at the pool’s edge and dip their feet into the water for a moment of pure relaxation. Well worth a splash of trust!
“Pools are places where we come together, like water, with water, through water. What if we build watery communities – like pools? The installation I have made for HMK is meant to be a oasis of (collective) wellbeing, caring and togetherness, somewhere between memory and fiction.”
Rik Dijkhuizen
Instead of heading to an altar, Dijkhuizen invites viewers to be seduced by the water and spend time with its unique vitality, whether alone or collectively, to recall each memory we have of water. From a simple glass of water to floating in a pool, water is the noblest human right both within and outside of our bodies.
This installation manages to exceptionally frame that precise moment when your pruning toes and fingers indicate that it’s time to get some air, but the pool’s magnetic attraction holds you inside. While the poolside has always been a perimeter for ideal observation, I do remember floating alongside others like sweet-water crocodiles, holding the water level just below our eyes in order to have the best view of what can be called a fountain of both body and soul.
‘Inside Poolside’
Korte Achterstraat 2A
1621 GA Hoorn (NL)
01.08.2020 – 13.09.2020
Best,
Marcelo Horacio Maquieira Piriz.
