Yvonne Dröge Wendel, 'To Be To Gather', 2022

City center The Hague: Spui (opposite City Hall)

Unveiled: Wednesday 22 June 2022, 17:00
Location sculpture: Spui, The Hague  (opposite City Hall)
The artwork was unveiled with a number of special encounters. >> Watch the highlights on Vimeo and photos on the website

On Wednesday 22 June the sculpture To Be To Gather, a new artwork made by Yvonne Dröge Wendel was unveiled in The Hague. It is the latest addition to The Sculpture Gallery, a unique series of open air sculptures exhibited in The Hague's historic center. Many of Dröge Wendel's works are exercises in on-going encounters. And To Be To Gather is no exception: this new work playfully invites the public to touch it, interact or arrange a meeting.
The unveiling took place during the exhibition run of the eponymous presentation at Stroom, To Be To Gather, which closes on 31 July 2022.

The exhibition title - To Be To Gather - refers to both a gathering place and a state of mind. The work has a tubular structure - it is hollow on the inside - and invites you to insert your arms and head. After doing so, whatever you see or experience actually differs from one person to the next. You may feel like breaking out into song, or listening to the sounds of the city. Or you may decide it's a perfect setting for a private conversation. It's all up to you, the visitor.
 
This fascination with how we relate to objects runs like a thread through Dröge Wendel's body of work. "For me, making a physical object is basically a search to find the right conditions for recording and transforming different approaches to communicating with, feeling and relating with objects. As such, it is a quest to understand material as an active component of our social fabric," explains the artist.

About Yvonne Dröge Wendel
Yvonne Dröge Wendel is an alumnus of Amsterdam's Gerrit Rietveld Academy and residency programs at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam and the Delfina Foundation in London. She currently works as head of Gerrit Rietveld Academy's Fine Arts department. In 1994, Dröge Wendel was awarded second prize in the Fine Arts and Theatre category of the Prix de Rome. In 2016, she won the Dr. A.H. Heineken Award for Art, the foremost fine arts prize in the Netherlands. The jury lauded Yvonne Dröge Wendel's work for its originality, inventiveness and vitality. She regularly contributes to exhibitions and projects at locations in the Netherlands and abroad, including Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven; Schunck Glaspaleis, Heerlen; Kunsthal Rotterdam; Sonsbeek Arnhem; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Liverpool Biennial; National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi.

The Sculpture Gallery
For the past three decades, Stroom Den Haag has been organizing The Sculpture Gallery. Originally conceived and designed by P. Struycken, this outdoor presentation of contemporary Dutch sculpture presents works made especially for The Hague city center. Every year, Stroom commissions a new work from a leading Dutch artist. This year, Stroom once again approached a woman artist, in an aim to bring more diversity and balance to the collection.

Special thanks to:
The work To Be To Gather is made possible in part thanks to the efforts of René Welker, Nina Rave, the Kemner bronze foundry in Cuijk, JC Straaltechniek Werkendam BV and the support of the City of The Hague.

Yvonne Dröge Wendel, unveiling ‘To Be To Gather’, 2022
photo: Naomi Moonlion, courtesy Stroom Den haag
Yvonne Dröge Wendel, 'To Be To Gather'
photo: Naomi Moonlion, courtesy Stroom Den haag
Yvonne Dröge Wendel, 'To Be To Gather'
photo: Naomi Moonlion, courtesy Stroom Den haag
Yvonne Dröge Wendel, detail ‘To Be To Gather’, 2022
photo: Naomi Moonlion, courtesy Stroom Den haag