Moles keep the soil healthy with their digging, but are often regarded as a pest. In Van Sonsbeeck's exhibition, the moles of modernism have been at work: they have left their ‘molehills’ on both the inside and outside of a modernist glass façade by architect Wim Quist. Here, they do not undermine the mown lawn, but the austere order of the architecture and the strict division between inside and outside.
Sarah van Sonsbeeck playfully comments on the modernist tradition in both visual art and architecture. With the acquisition of twenty-two of her ‘molehills’, this commentary has a permanently place in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum. The acquisition was made possible thanks to the Hilgemann Fund.
Moles of Modernism is on display until 7 April 2024. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with the same title, on sale in the museum shop and webshop.
About the Hilgemann Fund
The Kröller-Müller Museum launched the Hilgemann Fund in 2022. This named fund was founded by visual artist Ewerdt Hilgemann and his wife Antoinette de Stigter. The fund is intended to support ‘idiosyncratic sculpture’, or three-dimensional art in the broadest sense. The support may take the form of an acquisition, exhibition or a publication. The fund is managed by the Kröller-Müller Museum.
With the Hilgemann Fund, Ewerdt Hilgemann wants to ‘give something back’ for the rewarding career that he himself has enjoyed. Collaboration with other artists has always played an important role for him, as it has for Antoinette de Stigter, who founded the Art Affairs Gallery in Amsterdam in 1989, which specializes in international modern art with a strong conceptual slant.
The first disbursement from the Hilgemann Fund was a contribution towards the acquisition of six video works by Jeroen Jongeleen (Apeldoorn, 1967).