ENGINEERINGNET.EU -- Artists Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (together: HeHe) live in Paris. Since they started collaborating in 1999 they have executed art projects throughout Europe.
They often realise projects that give a totally different meaning to familiar situations. At the same time, their work is also poetic and humorous.
HeHe: “We were amazed that although Maasvlakte 2 was created totally by man, the beach and dunes look so natural, as if they had always been there. We wanted to emphasise this field of tension between nature and human intervention."
"We are doing that by putting a layer of red sand on the beach. It will seem very unnatural. Some visitors may associate it with a Martian landscape or pollution and danger, but at the same time the colour makes it very beautiful. The beach usually looks very natural and as a visitor you are the element that seems unnatural. That feeling will probably be reversed.”
The 75 tonnes of red sand, a good 50 cubic metres, will be a little south of the southernmost beach entrance of the new recreation beach on Maasvlakte 2.
That beach will be open to the public from Saturday 26 May. The project will be visible from that moment and can be visited. It is a few hundred metres south of the first beach entrance. Visitors can simply walk to it.
BACKGROUND
RODUIN by HeHe is part of Portscapes 2, a series of art projects in the context of the construction of Maasvlakte 2. The first edition of Portscapes took place in 2009. In those projects, culminating in an exhibition in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the artists explored the geology, cultural history and ecology of Maasvlakte 2.
Four artists have been commissioned to create a work of art for Portscapes 2. Almost simultaneously with the work of HeHe, a work by the Rotterdam artist-architect Jan Konings will be put into use. His work consists of monumental stairs that bring visitors from the parking area across the dunes and down to the recreation beach.
