peter Zumthor
In 2013, Museum De lakenhal invited me to create a large work on an 11 by 4.5 meter wall in the Meelfabriek in Leiden. This prominent building was to be taken under the hands of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor over the next few years.
Review Sandra Smallenburg (NRC)
(About the exhibition in the Meelfabriek by the Cloth Hall) And then, as a fantastic final chord, there is Maurice Braspenning’s monumental mural, which has the head of Peter Zumthor wedged between floor and ceiling like a boulder. I do like the idea that when the architect himself visits the building later, he will be face to face with his giant mirror image. And that he will have to demolish his own head when the renovation begins. But for now, the mural will remain for a while, just like the graffiti and scribbles of the workers of old. I very much hope that this fantastic initiative will have a sequel. That there will be many more beautiful artist contributions to the factory. And that eventually art will have a permanent place in this enormous complex.
For the exhibition, I created a new work on location. It has become a monumental portrait of Zumthor: “My starting point was to make a connection between building, material and architecture. For this I used the head of architect Peter Zumthor,. It is a large chalk drawing in which the head is wedged at an angle like a boulder, between floor and ceiling. In the process of remodeling, the wall will eventually be broken out by Zumthor’. The structure of the building is the monument and not the shell, the bricks, Zumthor said. So what was clear from the beginning is that the work would be temporary, something that for me gave the work the right connotation. Temporality and vanity.
Sketch head Peter Zumthor for the Cloth Hall Project in the Flour Factory
The Making Of
The process of creating the wall drawing Zumthor at the Flour Factory was captured by 10seconds.