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Women 2; Granite, Height 3.8 Meter


interesting about plants is the way in which they develop in space. There is nothing contrived about the architecture of a flower; it arrived at this shape, and took a good billion years to get there. Based on potted plants, I can show in a simple, accessible way how nature unfolds, like a small miracle that unfolds before your eyes. I always show how my wooden sculptures are put together. If I feel something is missing, I just bolt something extra on there. You mustn’t hide it. My sculptural language originates in practice.


Extra pieces of wood added on are marked by huge bolts riveted together, the tulip heads are made of staves from old wine barrels.


SWAYING REEDS The third visual layer, on the side of the water, consists of a row of reeds cut out of tree trunks, crowned with the highly characteristic cigars (made of metal). This row of reeds is a clear


evidence of Buckens’ virtuosity with the chainsaw. The tree trunks appear to have been sawn up into filigree, and they seem to sway in the wind. “That’s Dutch weather for you” says Buckens, “You’ve got to follow the wind, and you’ve got to follow the tree. They all lean to one side.”


MARBLE RICE Kees Buckens also works as artist in residence abroad. Over the past few years, he has been a regular visitor to Japan, he installed a giant stone stack in Aley, a city under reconstruction in Lebanon (Balance 4, 2000), and for the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, Buckens created a movingly apt monumental grain of rice (Rice, 2005):


I’ve done a lot in former war-zones. There you can see that art very definitely plays a significant role. People use it as a mirror, to lift themselves up. There, fine art is a sign of overcoming a miserable situation. These are societies that are


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