Eva Rothschild: A Gated Community

Het Nieuwe Instituut regularly invites an artist, designer or architect to create work in response to Sonneveld House, one of the best-preserved private houses built in the Dutch Functionalist style. From June 12 to September 18, 2016, it is the turn of Irish artist Eva Rothschild to show her work in the house.

Rothschild has responded to Sonneveld House’s status as a museum and monument by creating a series of large, geometric sculptures, which are placed throughout the house alongside a number of smaller, more discreet pieces. The larger works create an alternative architecture that questions what is possible spatially within the house and highlights the sense of control that Rothschild sees as inherent within the domestic environment. This intervention allows the visitor to experience the house very differently. Whereas the museum is usually frozen in time and visitors move silently, along fixed routes at a respectful distance from the objects, Rothschild invites visitors to explore the house with a heightened awareness of social structure. Works are placed directly along the prescribed route through the house, creating opportunities and choices for the viewer as they negotiate the additional thresholds and barriers they create. As a counterpoint to these intensely formal, sculptural gates and frames, smaller sculptural objects are placed throughout the house occupying the roles usually taken by family photographs and domestic ornaments, referring obliquely to the absented inhabitants. These smaller works are directly informed by artworks from the house at Kettles Yard in Cambridge, England—a key reference for the artist in approaching the house as museum.

Rothschild’s extensive use of industrial processes is often interrupted by the introduction of handcrafted elements: her formal idiom and use of materials have an affinity with the Minimalist art of the 1960s, underlined by a highly personal and intuitive approach. Rothschild has previously been exhibited at Tate Britain, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Kunsthalle Zürich.

Het Nieuwe Instituut has invited three internationally operating visual artists to make successive works for Sonneveld House in 2016. Previously in the series, the Mexican architect and artist Santiago Borja made an installation on the roof of the house. Rothschild’s intervention will be followed by a work by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The series is curated by Erich Weiss.

Sonneveld House
Sonneveld House is one of the best-preserved houses built in the Dutch Functionalist (Nieuwe Bouwen) style. The villa was designed in 1933 by architecture firm Brinkman and Van der Vlugt for Albertus Sonneveld, a director of the Van Nelle Factory, and is located next to Het Nieuwe Instituut on Museumpark in Rotterdam. The architects designed a total concept in which architecture, interior and furnishings are perfectly coordinated and reinforce one another. Het Nieuwe Instituut regularly invites an artist, designer or architect to make a site-specific installation for Sonneveld House. The confrontation with contemporary art and design sets the carefully restored monument in a contemporary context.

Het Nieuwe Instituut

architecture, design, e-culture
The contemporary era is characterised by radical technological, economic, cultural and social shifts. Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam aims to illuminate and map a rapidly changing world while at the same time fostering discussion of topics related to the vast field of design. All the institute’s activities are grounded in the principles of design and innovation—two concepts bound up with changing value systems and conflict. Sonneveld House is owned by Stichting Volkskracht Historische Monumenten, Rotterdam, and managed by Het Nieuwe Instituut.

A Gated Community by Eva Rothschild has been made possible by a generous contribution from the Mondriaan Fund.