ABOUT STUDIO DRÉ WAPENAAR

CANVAS-ARCHITECTURE, -DESIGN and -SCULPTURE

“Studio Dré Wapenaar works at the interface of architecture, design and sculpture. Sculpture is the base.
Working with sculptures, presented in a three-dimensional context, is dealing with people turning around the work and being confronted with it. In working with tents and pavilions this movement is enlarged towards people turning and twisting around each other as well.
It can be seen as a result of the quest to find out how groups of people and individuals relate.
Tents, with the universal language they speak, are an excellent means to understand at least something of the chemistry between people.

At present the work is moving towards archtitectural interventions, “hardcore”-designs and urban-development routings. At the same time new sculptural projects are being shaped in the studio itself.
• Architectural interventions can be seen, for instance, at the MASS MoCA’s Courtyard-C-Pavilion ( the central courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts ), and the Recital-Pavilion in the central courtyard of the NSG highschool in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
• More “hardcore-related” designs are under development. These are designs really ment for the industry. The first prototypes can be expected in the spring of 2009.
• Urban-development-routings can be seen in a few new commisions for small towns, but already in the Proposal for the Rotterdam Souq.
• In 2008 we’ve built the CAMPTENT. This work fits in a series of works in which dré wapenaar is going back to his earlier works where the idea of geo-metric related forms and shapes are directing the movement of people. Combining this with the idea of the tent, where people are turning and twisting each other, the artist gives new possibilities to play and study. No heavy concepts, but fun designing , sculpting and building, with the production totally inside the atelier.
• In this series new works are coming up like the 8-Plane-Tent ( spring ’09 ) and the Panoramic-Tent.

Dré Wapenaar
Rotterdam
December 2008