Delft, the Netherlands (AP)-The famous wind force beasts have been brought along the Dutch North Sea coast, to a chic art show Miami and even on “The Simpsons”.
Now. They have a final resting place in a Dutch city that is most famous for “Girl with a Pearl Earring” painter John Vermeer and Blauw Painty.
The “bones” of Theo Jansen's “beach animals” – beach animals in Dutch – have taken over a former cable factory in Delft, the small city in the Western Netherlands that Jansen has shouted home for decades.
“Over the years there has been a kind of evolutionary history, you could say. And you could see these animals as a kind of natural historical objects,” the 77-year-old artist told The Associated Press before the opening of the installation.
The Strandbeest -Mortuary, as the exhibition is called, has followed the various versions of the mobile sculptures since 1990 when Jansen created the first of plastic pipes and tape. As the animals evolved, Jansen recorded plastic bottles, wooden planks, fabrics and cardboard.
The life and death cycle of these famous animals – usually formed from PVC pipes – has left an impressive fossil record that can be seen on the exhibition.
Marloes Koster, who organized the exhibition for the Prinsenhof -Museum of Delft, said that Jansen's ultimate goal is to create a beast that will live forever.
“He's not there yet, so these are those who didn't make it,” she added.
The museum is undergoing major renovations, so Koster and its colleagues have put together art and cultural events at alternative locations in the city while the building is closed.
Jansen was born near the North Sea and grew up fascinated by the wind that often touches the Dutch coastline. He used it to 'walk' his animals along the beach. Every year he creates a new string beast and declares the animal dead at the end of the summer.
“I do experiments all summer, and in the fall I am a little wiser (over) how these animals should survive in the future,” Jansen said.
Many of the visitors to the opening of the exhibition had followed Jansen's work for years and wanted to understand how the beachbests had changed over time.
“You see a kind of development in the way he does things. So they start very simply, and then it gets more and more complicated. So they are evolving,” said Cor Nonhof, a local Delft who had come to the exhibition with his wife.
Even at the opening, Jansen wanted to go back to the beach to work on the latest evolution of his beach animal.
“I can't do anything else,” Jansen said. “And I am very happy with that.”
