En garde! - an installation - De Natris Gallery 2018

In summertime the door of Gallery De Natris stays closed. But there is a huge window you can look through. Bart Drost makes a new installation for this specific place. He will transform more than 400 balloons into swords. Childrens toys, fighting toys. It will be cheerful bunch. Come on and play! 


The swords are like a mountain. a big mountain, compared to the pile of wooden swords that Drost presented at the exhibition 'scheppingsdrang' in VM23, 2017. Less dramatic too. Or is this not what it looks like?

The balloons will play mountain in the gallery for two months. But balloons do not have the eternal life. Slowly, very slowly they run empty. Slowly, very slowly the mountain will collapse.

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the dwindling mountain

For more than 6 weeks, 400 balloons, transformed into swords, have been placed ona pedestal in Galerie de Natris in Nijmegen. Day and night photos were taken automatically. These photos are shown here in a timelapse. The days, the nights. Shine sunlight shaves over the balloons. So here and there you can suddenly see a balloon creeping away. It is as if the mountain lives, lived.


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on the mantelpiece

During the months that the balloons slowly dawned, Bart Drost took a series of close-up photographs of the balloons every five days, recording the individual changes.
Some of these photos are placed on the gallery's mantelpiece. As it were, the history of the Ballon family.

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a painfull confrontation

       Ridder Roderick



       Daar staat de Ridder Roderick

       En kijkt mij stralend aan

       Vurig verlangen laait in mij op

       Haassnel naar hem toe te gaan

 

       Beetje bij beetje en stap na stap

       Kom ik nader nader tot Hem

       Maar het is Ridder die bepaalt

       Neem ik gaspedaal of rem

 

       Bijna bijna tot zijn buik genaderd

       De laatste stap toch niet gezet

       Ridders ogen neus en mond volharden

       Ik heb het weer eens niet gered

 

       Maar dan - jouchée - is het mijn beurt

       De rollen omgedraaid

       Ik zal nu hèm eens laten staan

       De ridder die mij onrust zaait

 

      Doch ach en wee, hoe dom gedaan

      Macht verlamde mijn verstand

      In plaats van bij hem binnengaan

      Deed ik oog-om-oog en tand-om-tand

 

      Tot slot de babbel, heel erg mager

      En voor de vorm nog wat feedback

      Daar sta ik met mijn mond vol tanden

      Sta  - heel even - totaal voor gek

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Ivanhoe!

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Bart Drost

free artist

Graafseweg 183a
6531ZR Nijmegen
The Netherlands