"HUMAN BOUNDARIES" Singelpark Leiden 2020

The 'watchtower' is surrounded by a fine-mesh fence. The fence has dangerous looking spikes on the top edge. The spines rotate when you push them. Artist Harold de Bree has given them all different human skin colours. He questions the way in which people everywhere in the world try to protect their own ideology, religion or ideas. With this tower, de Bree sketches an illusion of authenticity.

He made an image of a watchtower without it actually being one. Because in this one you can't climb up, which is what a watchtower is made for. It mainly assumes a symbol function. It is also hidden in the iron points. Although they suggest an aggressive view of man, he says something else with them. Namely that boundaries are also a biological fact and that we all determine our own boundaries.
For example, how large the group of friends is that you can count as your nearest and dearest. In essence, that principle does not work any differently than with a herd of animals whose size is adjusted to the amount of food available. The size of our group of intimates is limited on average and will have changed little over the centuries. Also the question arises for whom or what the tower is made, who is it guarding and from what. From the pointy skin toned spikes one could come to the conclusion that we need protection from ourselves, or we need to protect everyone from everyone else.

"Human Boundaries" Harold de Bree often makes imitations of military objects. Military vehicles, bridges or bunkers. Objects that we all know and recognize. However, a small twist puts you on the wrong track. The watchtower in the Singelpark refers to the original ramparts on which the new park was built. The artist found the inspiration for this Leiden watchtower in Berlin, the place with one of the most iconic border areas during the Cold War. The Berlin Wall is etched in our collective memory. The tower in Leiden is a simple version of a former DDR light tower next to the Berlin wall. You could say that De Bree models his objects into archetypes. Recreated in their most recognizable form and stripped of their functionality, the sense of authenticity remains. This is how he gave this light tower its most characteristic elements. A staircase and a hatch to climb in are missing. And yet the threat it poses is no less.

Steel Explosion 2022
"Frozen in Time"

Roughly pointed metal corner lines cut with a plasma cutter form an explosion. It also looks somewhat like an umbellifer-like plant. Made of centimeter thick steel. Size can vary, but in this cases roughly: high 180cm diameter +/- 400cm

In this work, I want to achieve a certain layered duality through subject and execution.?In this case, for me, the duality lies in the silence that the work radiates, the standstill of an explosion, as already reflected in the title, combined with the shape of a picaresque plant.

In the present tense, in the now, explosions on various battlefields are a reality. In Europe, Africa, etc. this is in stark contrast whit the silence that this work radiates, the standstill, as already reflected in the title. Just like photos from high-speed cameras that photograph splashing water droplets, displaying a fraction in time. It depicts a motionless reality. A reality that is normally invisible to our eyes. Like the deafening soundlessness of this stationary explosion.

By using a plasma cutter to cut very rough and frayed steel into pointed explosion and fragmentation lines, its tearing explosive power is shown.?I find it alienating that the shape of an explosion can also look a lot like a flower, the way a river meanders, a tree grows, a lightning bolt forms, what your blood vascular system looks like. It seems that from chaos a uniformity arises, based on a physical mathematical principle.

"Shell Burst"
This is an exaple of a free Marquatry work (wood veneer and mother of pearl) on an existing antique table. I made this one for a befriended gallerist.
About 7 years ago I started doing marquetry, i was fascinated by the old fashioned feel it has, the out of styleness.
I use this feeling to get the works some howe out of its time fase. As I used mother of pearl as the outward blasting shrapnel, it got even more 'over the top'.

'View on the land made by the will of the people'
DMZ-project Zuid-Korea 2019
Titel:"View on The Nation made by the will of the people"

North Korean skyline silhouettes which are scratched in, on site at the South Korean border, onto electronics printed circuit boards prepared in advance with paint.
The GPS code indicated there was also applied to work via my telephone, with a direction arrow indicating north.
Taken during mining research project in the DMZ (demilitarized zone)
Title of works No. 1/9 
"View on The Nation made by the will of the people"
The title is partly a line from North Korea's national anthem.

I was able to make a dazle painting work on the fencing of the Dutch consulate in Istanbul. 

The idea arose from necessity, a short while ago, a man had entered the consulate and had taken down the Dutch flag on the roof and raised the Turkish flag.  All this in response to the visit to Rotterdam of the Turkish minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, who wanted to address the Turkish Dutch there,  but that was prohibited by the Dutch state. The question was whether I could make a 'view-obscuring' work on the bars of the fencing in front of the consulate.  Done as requested. The Dazzle Paint image I had made for this purpose distorted the view of the consulate and gave extra meaning to the tense situation making use of the 'Dazzle Paint camouflage, ont its history'.

title: "Death By Democracy" 2018
Performance action during Manifesta12 in Palermo. Material: costumes, blood splatter effects, sound effects, video manipulation. Two people sit at a table and explain their organization's new project through a PowerPoint.The organization is trying to launch a new idea, but apparently there are individuals who don't want that to happen. A number of strange and disturbing images of murder through 'democracy' appear on the screenAfter an apparent digital attack on their computer, the PowerPoint is taken over by a hacker, and there is nothing left to watch the bumbling of the employees, who are at a loss.Then a red laser dot appears on the speaker's tunic, a shot is fired, and blood splatters around. After panic, the injured employee is carried out of sight.An apparently very bad and dangerous idea that immediately got out of hand.The script of yet another Hollywood blockbuster/B-movie, or an attack on the'New World Order' or is that another conspiracy theory...'

"The cloud of the knowledge of good and evil" 
Marquetry work made with veneer.The Panel shows two skeletons apparently representing Adam and Eve, instead of being in the garden of paradise surrounded by trees, plants and animals, the panel shows in the background the iconic mushroom-shaped atomic explosion cloud that will form the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil depicted. With the apple in Adam's hand replaced by the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is also the supreme god and god of the sky and thunder.

Is this the fall of humanity, the development of knowledge and technology, only capable of total self-destruction.There was never a way back to paradise, but just as the animals and plants in Chernobyl thrive and flourish in the absence of humanity, perhaps a disaster is needed to get parts of paradise back?