From 12 June 2016 Irish artist Eva Rothschild will present work commissioned by Het Nieuwe Instituut that reacts to the status of Sonneveld House as a museum house. Rothschild has responded to Sonneveld House’s status as a museum and monument by creating a series of large, geometric sculptures that will be placed throughout the house alongside a number of smaller, more discreet pieces.
The larger works create an alternative architecture that questions what is possible spatially within the house and highlights the sense of control that Rothschild sees as inherent within the domestic environment. This intervention will allow visitors to experience the house very differently. Whereas the museum is usually frozen in time and visitors move silently along fixed routes at a respectful distance from the objects, Rothschild invites visitors to explore the house with a heightened awareness of social structure. Works are placed directly along the prescribed route through the house, creating opportunities and choices for the viewer as they negotiate the additional thresholds and barriers they create. As a counterpoint to these intensely formal, sculptural gates and frames, smaller sculptural objects are placed throughout the house, occupying the roles usually taken by family photographs and domestic ornaments referring obliquely to the absented inhabitants. These smaller works are directly informed by artworks from the house at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, England - a key reference for the artist in approaching the house as museum.
Rothschild’s extensive use of industrial processes is often interrupted by the introduction of handcrafted elements: her formal idiom and use of materials have an affinity with the Minimalist art of the 1960s underlined by a highly personal and intuitive approach. Rothschild has previously been exhibited at Tate Britain, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Kunsthalle Zürich.
Eva Rothschild’s intervention in Sonneveld House is part of a series curated by Erich Weiss. Previously in the series, the Mexican architect and artist Santiago Borja made an installation on the roof of the house. Rothschild’s intervention will be followed by a work by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
From time to time Het Nieuwe Instituut invites an artist, designer or architect to make a site specific installation. Designer Richard Hutten and interior and landscape architect Petra Blaisse previously made work for Sonneveld House. The confrontation with contemporary art and design sets the carefully restored monument in a contemporary context.