Foundation Art and Public Space
LaSalle
Hortus conclusus
photo: Gert Jan van Rooijen
artist:
LaSalle
located in:
Verpleeghuis Polderburen
,
client:
Polderburen, Centrum voor Verpleeghuiszorg
“Hortus Conclusus�, the private garden of the institute, Polderburen, in Almere, can be most accurately titled a ‘viewing garden’. This interior garden is open to the public. However, most of the year, residents can take in the Polderburen ‘court’ through the glass hallway that encircles the garden.
Consequently the artist duo, LaSalle (Albert Goederond en Patty Struik) chose both ‘being outside’ and ‘being inside’ as a point of origin for their garden sculpture. They designed ‘an installation’, consisting of transparent, printed signs made of artificial fiber that were distributed around the edges of the garden and are visible from the interior road. This hortus conclusus is both artificial and natural for as LaSalle writes in their draft proposal: ‘Gardens are places where nature is excluded yet made visible at the same time. Occasionally these two worlds, the “unreal� ideal image and the “real� landscape, converge such as in the enclosed garden, the Hortus Conclusus’. This ambiguity resurfaces in the ideas that they incorporate into their installation. These are not true-to-life representations but, in terms of the four seasons, allegorical ones.
