Exhibition Panamarenko

This autumn, the museum presents a major retrospective of the Belgian artist Panamarenko. Various objects are displayed in the rooms and corridors of the new building, ‘varying from magnetic shoes, Hollywood-style felt dolls, cockchafers to cars and, above all, aircraft’. Drawings, sketches and other studies provide further insight into his surprising world of ideas. A documentary on the artist is also shown.

The Aeromodeller, the airship that Panamarenko had wanted to fly from Belen-Neet in Belgium to the exhibition grounds of Sonsbeek '71 in Arnhem, is exhibited indoors. But ‘even our large new sculpture room […] is unfortunately not large enough’ to be able to show the airship fully inflated, writes Oxenaar. ‘Nevertheless, the gigantic balloon that covered the full width and height of the sculpture room gave scale and a dramatic final effect to the exhibition.’

Some of Panamarenko’s artworks are interactive, such as Gutter, which is donated to the museum by Martin Visser in 1978. Visitors to the exhibition can operate the work themselves with an electric motor that creates a vortex.