LIZ SAYS: Every year Amsterdam hosts a monumental sculpture exhibition in Apollolaan. The neighborhood is a perfect set for the introduction of outdoor installations of pieces that are obviouslyly difficult to show. For a couple of months, you can just hop off a tram and enter an art bubble where proportion is skewed, where you can interact with each piece, breathing down its neck or cowering at its feet. And, you can get overdramatic because everyone else is doing the some thing creative.
The boulevards are huge and carpeted with perfect green grass and with the huge double bike lanes on either side, the feeling of space is extra large, especially compared to the narrow medieval streets of downtown Amsterdam.
Cut back to the Carl Andre bit of metal sidewalk, making no impression, in a space of infinite sidewalks and car, bus and bike lanes. But, if you're a fan, its there, you can see it.
A lot of the pieces this year invited the viewer in, there were less giant pieces and more human scale pieces. A skull playhouse human sized representations of humans, pieces about the size of cars, made of metal, fiberglass and the stuff of today.
There was a great found piece, by Michel Francois, of a giant tire with some damage, evidently used in a lawsuit. Even the grossly oversized tire invited inspection and rewarded the viewer with a complicated hole which only led to more questions about the giant tire. Like.
There were several artists I recognized from recent exhibitions in Paris. Around the John and Yoko Hilton, there is a piece by El Anatsui. He has a great piece in the Pompidou center. It looks like a giant drape of golden mail decorated with bits of color and upon closer inspection, the bottle tops and bits of what look like small cans are revealed.
Here in Amsterdam such pieces are draped in the tree above and landscaping around Rodin's Thinker.
The wooden legs of Jems Robert Koko Bi immediately related the pain and loss of the title, Exodus.
Possibly one of my faves just because it made me laugh was the big white hello kittyized Tom Sach's, Miffy Fountain, with tears streaming out of its big bunny eyes into a pool surrounding the Miffy.
Although the boat sized golden bird by Marte Roling, was close to my heart waiting on the pier at the Wyndam.
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