Land Artist Bruno Doedens explores the reciprocal relationship between art and landscape; looking at how visual arts, film, music and literature enrich and shape the dynamic forces of nature. The work features both audience and nature as viewer and participant in an organic collaboration. The complexity and vastness of the magnitude of the projects surprices and astonishes in the same way landscape does. Doedens projects are of unimaginably large scale and dimension.
For more than twenty years, Doedens has been experimenting with the essence of the Dutch landscape, a dynamic man-made work of art. Doedens and SLeM (Stichting Landschapstheater en meer /Foundation of Landscape Theatre and More) began their artistic research of the Dutch landscape in 2003 using theatre, visual art, music and film as their main sources of inspiration.
Together they have been embarking on a playful journey along the boundaries of what seems self-evident, where-in the seemingly impossible is made possible. Dikes, dunes, canals and beaches are altered into temporary landscapes that stir the imagination and are big enough to get lost in. And the forces of nature are always present, which means that no moment is the same as the next. Ebb and flow, wind and rain, light and clouds, all inspire, co-design and re-shape these impermanent landscapes to the point of destruction. The only thing that remains is the memory of the experience. They become places with a story and a recollection.
Doedens not only plays with the size and scale of his transient landscapes but he also includes the audience, who become contributors and spectators simultaneously. He inspires the audience to participate by showing them new ways to look at known landscapes and to see them from a new perspective. This opens the door to imagination where local communities and viewers become a vital part of the project and part of this shifting of perspective.
His projects add a rich, new and dynamic layer to the stories of this unique Dutch landscape which is forever shifting and returning back to the earth, following the natural order and constant renewal of the seasons.