Driessens & Verstappen

Erwin Driessens, b. 1963, Wessem, The Netherlands; Maria Verstappen, b. 1964, Someren, The Netherlands. Live and work in Amsterdam

Sand Box, 2009
Wood, lacquer, metal, fans, sand, electronics, 245 x 122 x 176 cm
Courtesy of the artists 

Hot Pool, 2010
Wood, lacquer, metal, heating elements, fans, candle wax, electronics. Diameter 113 cm, height 154 cm
Courtesy of the artists

The Amsterdam-based duo Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen have worked in the field of generative art, software, and machines since the early 1990s. Presented here are two of their “atmospheric” dioramas, Sand Box and Hot Pool, which are a visual description of their conceptual interest in working with self-generating processes. Inspired by the non-subjective, spontaneous yet organized mechanisms observed in nature, the self-maintaining environments inside the works help create imaginary worlds existing in their own alternative climates. Through a small window in the boxes, viewers can see up close the desert-shaping interaction between the wind and sand or the icy landscapes of what seem to be melting icebergs.

Although it can be harmful to nature, technology has also opened up new ways of looking at and perceiving it. In this sense, the true evolutionary process based on complexity rather than control and order is perhaps better represented in the field of technology than in any other, continuously trying to assign visual language to the often invisible processes that shape our reality and our future. Driessens & Verstappen see an artistic challenge in providing us with new ways of perceiving the world around us. They follow to the letter the spaces technology opens up, through which dimensions with an uncanny and mesmerizing likeness to our own continuously reconstitute humans’ relationship to nature.