Ron van der Ende works as a sculptor in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Recently he built a series of perspective-reliefs: almost flat cars constructed in old wood. Here you will find an example of his work: a GAZ M21 Volga, my GAZ M21 Volga!
GAZ 21 VOLGA 1962 / bas-relief / hout / 190x110x16cm
NRC HANDELSBLAD 12 januari 2000
(translated by Ron van der Ende)
Flat wooden cars in the art gallery
Sculptor Ron van der Ende (36) makes
cars out of scrap wood. "For me, it's about the feeling that a car invokes".
By our editor ARJEN RIBBENS
Rotterdam 12 jan. A red Ferrari Testarossa
500 TR, a Chrysler Town and Country, two weathered Dodge Chargers and a dented
Toyota Corolla -the studio of sculptor Ron van der Ende looks like a showroom
for second hand cars with a curious inventory. The floor is covered with a thick
layer of sawdust. But not to absorb spilled motor oil, because these cars do
not leak: they are made of wood.
The cars are half the size of real
cars and are stripped to weel-less carcasses. Still it will be easy for the
enthusiast to identify the models, that's how accurate Van der Ende has copied
the originals. But something is strange here. Ingeniously the sculptor manipulates
the eye of the viewer. The works are best described as three dimensional perspective-anamorphoses,
to be compared with the paintings on a long wall that can only be seen when
viewed at an angle. Van der Endes cars are best viewed from the front. Then
the viewer will be dazzled by the perspectivical suggestion. Only on close inspection
will be revealed that these cars are only a half foot deep.
A vocabulary born out of necessity,
the artist explains. "Some time ago I was building wooden scalemodels of submarines.
I was looking for a new subject. Cars have a nice, complete shape. Take the
weels off and they are floating through space. But to depict metal shapes in
wood turned out to be technicaly rather tricky.
" Two months he toiled on an 80 centimeter
large scalemodel of an Opel Kadett."Calculating, measuring, building - a tough
job. Then when I also developed a back problem, I knew things had to be done
differently."
After a while he had a thought. Why
not to make three dimensional cars in an almost flat plane? The realisation
of that plan started behind the computer. On the internet Van der Ende found
pictures of cars that had an interesting perspective. These images he altered
on the computer with Photoshop, after which he used an overheadprojector to
place the contours of the sides on large sheets of triplex. By plotting the
vanishing point of the image on the wall of his workspace with some rope, he
was able to build a perspectively correct framework. The wooden frame he lined
with scrap wood some of which he fished out of the Nieuwe Maas, the river behind
his studio in the former departure hall of the Oranjelijn in Rotterdam. The
seams of the small pieces of wood define the curved shape of the carrosserie,
van der Ende does not paint the wood. He searches until he finds wood in the
right color. For the Ferrari Testarossa he found it for example in the red of
an old door from a former kingdomhall of the Jehovas Witnesses. "As you can
see, old fashioned handycraft still exists", laughs the artist.
The first car from the Van der Ende-factory
was a Chevrolette Chevelle from 1965, his own birthyear. "I was looking for
a sturdy car with a high rock-and-roll content." After that he honored his brothers
with models from their birthyears and for his Polish wife he built a Russian
Volga. "For me it's about the feeling a car invokes. Exotic cars, I wouldn't
want. I'm looking for memories I can share with others.."
And so the Dodge Chargers hanging
in the gallery right now played a leading part in a popular television series
in the eighties, the Dukes of Hazard. The Ferrari was driving around on his
brothers model racecar-set. And looking for the sentiment befitting a car crash
he ended up on the website of the firebrigade of Edithvale, a town in the Australian
state Victoria. By e-mail the artist informed after the fate of the occupants
of the dented Corrola lying helplessly on its back on the asphalt. Because,
he explains, it wouldn'be proper to make a piece of art from a fatal accident.
His work appeals to a large audience.
When he exhibited his first four scrap cars in october in Galerie Delta in Rotterdam,
there was a run. "Only just I did not need to call the police on horseback to
kick the people out", as the gallerist Hans Sonnenberg remembers the exhibition
by his "prima ballerina." "Passers by, families with prams, for a whole month
they were drawn in by rons sculptures. It had never been so busy."
Most art is boring, Ron van der Ende
says. "I really want to make something that is accessable. It's right that my
cars are valued by art collectors as well as by people that walk into the gallery
from the street. I hate snobbish, navel-staring art. And as a control freak
I also want to have a grip on the way my work is understood."
For the upcoming KunstRai Van der
Ende will probably build another series of four cars. After that he wants to
investigate whether his technique of squashed wooden cars is also suitable for
other subjects. He has already collected pictures of helicopters, shipping disasters
and molten nuclear plants. But on his bike he realised that the beauty of the
city will be his next subject. "Appartment blocks dissapearing into the mist,
that might be quite something."
Ron van der Ende t/m 5 febr. In Galerie Delta, Oude Binnenweg 113, Rotterdam, thu-sat 11-17 uur