Spinning plates, 2023

Plastic, motor, acrylic paint

26,5 Ø x 6 cm each

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​Spinning Plates is a floor installation consisting of multiple rotating sculptures. As the sculptures spin, they produce a subtle mechanical hum, introducing a rhythmic element that resonates throughout the space. This combination of sound and movement alters the atmosphere, inviting viewers to interact with both the work and its surroundings.

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Excerpt from text by Eline Verstegen​ for 3/3, a group exhibition with Tramaine De Senna and Che Go Eun.

The word ‘atmosphere’ has long been used to describe “moods in the air, the emotional tinge of a space”, as Gernot Böhme once wrote. The German philosopher has provided insightful analyses of what atmospheres are and how they come about. According to him, atmospheres are intangible totalities; they imbue everything. They communicate a feeling, by unifying “a diversity of impressions”. These impressions could be of certain lights, sounds, objects. What matters with these sensory things is not just their concrete production, but “the way in which they radiate outwards into space”. What matters is “the imaginative idea the observer receives through the object”. For finally, atmospheres are nothing without the sentient subject. They might emanate from (a constellation of) objects, but they need to be experienced in order to exist. Thinking about atmospheres hence means thinking about space, object and subject.

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It is this thinking that binds the practices of Tramaine de Senna, Che Go Eun and Manon van den Eeden. All three of them look at their surroundings with sustained attention. They aim to materialize the immaterial: fleeting moments in which things accumulate. Their sculptural objects are charged with multiple memories, emotions, sensations; with references, histories and meanings. They are hence simultaneously condensations and evocations of atmospheres. The visitor has to engage with them, has to be present in the physical and/or mental space, in order for them to open up.

 

In her practice, Manon van den Eeden plays with this ambiguity between form and function, between fake, real and hyperreal. An Unheimlichkeit permeates her works: neatly finished, recognizable objects are rendered unfamiliar, unreliable even,

because they are magnified, multiplied, merged, manipulated. Hereby she usually combines manual labour and digital technologies. This is also the case in her floor installation Spinning plates. The lighthearted randomness, much like that of a playful spinning top, is paired with a tense strictness. The movement of the works consequently prompts visitors to become aware of their movements in space as well. Moreover, they provide a score for the exhibition - but is it rhythmical or claustrophobic? Trapped between rotating and falling, in a seemingly endless inbetween state, one wonders: what does this equilibrium really entail? What universe do these plates represent?