Fragile. More than 40 Sculptures and Installations Made With Fragile Materials

Artist list

Gijs Assmann, Tim Breukers, Koos Buster, Ellen Deckwitz, Hella Jongerius, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Vytautas Kumža, Emmie Liebregts, Jelle Mastenbroek, Tilmann Meyer-Faje, Noor Nuyten, Alexandra Phillips, Maria Roosen, Rafaël Rozendaal, Geng Xue, Olivier van Herpt, Hans van Koolwijk, Sarah van Sonsbeeck, Elise ’t Hart

Opening: Sunday 29 September at 2.30 p.m.
​During the opening, several artists will engage in a conversation about the themes of the exhibition. Hans van Koolwijk, one of the participating artists, gives a performance that ties in with the exhibition. Rinkse van den Heuvel will be present with Beads: connect to play, play to connect, the project that she graduated within 2023. This collection of large, colourful beads challenges adult tot string their own necklace while participating in discussions about joy and happiness. 

If you would like to attend the opening, please register via www.coda-apeldoorn.nl/fragile  


Fragile brings together artists who explore their own vulnerability and experiences through their work, often introducing critical questions regarding political tensions or the displacement of people. An important unifying thread, much of this work exhibits a bold and experimental materials research that tests the very limits of physicality, bringing the work to the point it might literally explode under the tension. Fragile comprises work by Gijs Assmann, Tim Breukers, Koos Buster, Elise ’t Hart, Olivier van Herpt, Hella Jongerius, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Hans van Koolwijk, Vytautas Kumža, Emmie Liebregts, Jelle Mastenbroek, Tilmann Meyer-Faje, Noor Nuyten, Alexandra Phillips, Maria Roosen, Rafaël Rozendaal, Sarah van Sonsbeeck and Geng Xue. The exhibition also features a poem by Ellen Deckwitz, from the collection De steen vreest mij (The stone fears me, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2011). This collection of poems, which can be borrowed from CODA Library, follows the story of a family who slowly withdraws from their existence. For this exhibition, the CODA Museum partnered with the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) to gain insight into techniques and processes on the basis of interviews with artists and advisors active in the EKWC studio in Oisterwijk. 
 
Digital vulnerability 
Noor Nuyten experiments with melting tablet screens and mobile phones. Mapping the resources and raw materials needed to manufacture such devices, Nuyten reminds us of their origins and how dependent we have become on these everyday tools – and hence on the attendant raw materials they require. Presented in the exhibition is a hand-blown ball made from melted iPhones: an ‘offline timer’ that can burst at any moment due to the accumulated internal tension. Artist Rafaël Rozendaal also examines the relationship between the digital and analog worlds with his website-installationStereo. In an immense projection space he employs elements such as broken mirrors to confront the viewer with controlled algorithms via aspects of our daily lives. 
 
Political insecurity 
The work of Susanne Khalil Yusef addresses issues of identity, displacement, power dynamics, and the political situation in her homeland. Her colourful installation of ceramic heads and glass firearms is set playfully atop a rug patterned after a Palestinian scarf. Behind the whimsy, however, lie gripping references to a moving personal history. With her artworks made of ceramic, glass, and neon, Yusef seeks to raise awareness about the suffering of the Palestinian people. Illuminated best perhaps, by pink neon lights in handwritten Arabic which read: We want to live.
 
Resilience and transience 
Also, the personal and mental aspects of fragility and vulnerability are explored in this exhibition. In his often humorous ceramic- and glasswork, Koos Buster tackles everyday issues, from trivial annoyances to the great joys of life; revealing his own fragility and daily struggles captioned on ceramic wall tiles. For this show, CODA Museum has assembled the largest collection of his series, decorative plaques of almost everything I don’t like. This series reflects not only on current political themes like arms trading and farmer protests but also familiar annoyances like dealings with the tax office, the Dutch train services, or cafés too hip for their own good. 
 
Humans and their limitations are the central focus of Chinese artist Geng Xue’s video installation The Name of Gold, on loan from Keramiekmuseum Princessehof. This grand, black and white film is an animated story which takes place in a kind of goldmine, and is made with clay. The black and white colours suggest the opposites of cruelty and humour, reality and illusion, and heaven and earth. The clay figures in this story are hard workers, scarred by trauma, struggle and temptation, but through the use of gold, the artist also lets hope and desire shimmer through. 
 
Maria Roosen and Gijs Assmann use blown glass or glazed ceramics for their sculptures. Their work plays on inherent contrasts, such as the contradiction between gravity and falling out of balance, the hardness yet fragility of glass, or the opposites of life and death. Included in the series are a number of works from Gijs Assmann’s Vanitas series, each of which is dedicated to a friend or acquaintance. The Vanitas series emerged from a need to capture and manifest the memory of particular people, and in doing so, serves to remind us that everything is transitory; underscoring the certainty that even the subject on whom the sculpture is modeled, will one day die. 

Tim Breukers confronts the viewer with transiency and a world of decomposition with his partially decayed structures and stage sets depicting an apocalyptic world without humans. He chooses to accentuate the fragility of porcelain and ceramic, pushing this to the point of near collapse, effectively building an extreme tension into his sculptures. Breukers has made a new work especially for Fragile in CODA Museum – one linked to his well-known works with red FRAGILE tape. Here it is not used as packaging tape, but to build a fascinating installation. 
 
In the process of curating Fragile, we considered how and where the visitor might engage in the topics presented. One such opportunity for contemplation is offered in the work of Emmie Liebregts, where visitors can sit absorbed in her egg-shaped installation, listening to the sounds of various people’s ‘frail’ heartbeats. Or the work of Elise ’t Hart invites visitors to reflect on the vulnerability of home life, as they are immersed in the sounds of rattling teacups, all recorded individually. For the artist, the sounds of teacups evoke nostalgic feelings and a comfortable embrace, though this is certainly not the case for everyone. One can bring a piece of music to life by dropping a coin into Jelle Mastenbroek’s porcelain cabinet, triggering the music as it rolls. In addition to the finished artworks on display, CODA is also presenting experiments: the misfirings by some of the participating ceramic artists, which typically remain unseen. 

Experimenting with materials 
Apart from the installations and sculptures in Fragile, the show also features applied art and design works such as the famous Groove Bottles & Long Neck Bottles by Hella Jongerius, made of the two ancient materials of porcelain and glass, which, based on their natural and chemical properties, can never be fused. But Jongerius joins them by way of packing tape printed with FRAGILE, showing us how design can mirror the human condition: which is often one of fragility. 

Programme 
Fragility and vulnerability are not only exhibition themes but are also discussed and represented elsewhere in CODA. During Fragile, CODA presents a selection of jewellery from the CODA collection that fits with the theme of the exhibition. For this jewellery presentation in the Van Reekum Galerij visual artist Judith Bloedjes created a new wall installation. The[De]gradable exhibition (30 September to 9 February 2025) in the Showroom of CODA ExperienceLab focuses on sustainability and circularity in design and gives visitors insight into the possibilities and applications of degradable and compostable materials. For this exhibition designers and projects have been selected that experiment with materiality, sustainability and design. CODA ExperienceLab also showcases biodesign projects from the Makerspace and the maker community. Visual artist Evert Nijland not only presents a new collection of jewellery in the Showroom of CODA ExperienceLab but also shows a selection from previous series. His technical research is made clear through sketches. At CODA Library a theme table will be set up with poetry and literature titles in which vulnerability and fragility are important themes.

More information about the programme and activities such as workshops and the photo challenge can be found at www.coda-apeldoorn.nl/agenda.
 
The exhibition has been made possible with financial support from the Cultuurfonds and Fonds 21.