#maartenkolk

“We created the first version of the hare for Paper Zoo, an exhibition at MU in Eindhoven in 2009. It was a paper model of a sitting hare held together by small strips of tape. After some time, the adhesive on the tape started to dissolve, so the hare fell apart. When we displayed the remains on a table, the assembled bits of papers still formed the image of a hare, yet now of a hare lying down. Oddly enough, the form appeared somehow more natural and lifelike, and the look of the hare had gained a poetic beauty. Separately, the individual parts looked like paper scraps, but put together, they formed an image of a hare that had fallen into a graceful position achievable only by a real hare. We were very intrigued by this transformation. The original design was broken, but the remains of the paper hare had appeared to have acquired a soul.”

Maarten Kolk and Guus Kusters are no strangers to labour-intensive craftsmanship, but the demands of ‘Broken Hare’ went far beyond even what they consider to be a typical process. The object is created out of dozens of pattern parts made of porcelain paper. The parts are held together with thinner strips of porcelain glued individually by hand with clay slip. To protect their shape during the firing process, the parts are buried in ceramic powder; afterward, the pieces are unearthed and gently cleaned with a brush, as though they were archaeological findings. 

“We firmly believe that love, care, effort, attention, blood, sweat and tears all dwell in the object you make. For us, this is how the soul of an object is born. In this project, we wanted to take that conviction to another level. Regardless of the number of hours it would take to make the porcelain hare, we would make it. Maybe even because of the many hours it would take.” The first version of the porcelain hare was created in 2016 for the exhibition Bal! at the former royal palace of Soestdijk. Maarten Kolk and Guus Kusters were invited to create a site-specific piece for the shooting lane of the late king. Evoking ghosts of the past, the porcelain remains of hares were displayed in the grassy summer overgrowth of the shooting lane. In late 2017, the porcelain hare was added to the collection of renowned design publisher Thomas Eyck. As the hare was too fragile to be exhibited without a surrounding structure, Kolk and Kusters designed a framed version.

“We wanted to enhance the fragility of the hare and to accentuate its melancholic character with a support structure as delicate as the hare itself. Each shard of porcelain is held in place with small custom-made pieces of foam and wool, which are hand-sewn to the frame. Like a tailor making a bespoke suit intended for one special individual only, this is our way of giving even more care and attention to the object itself.”

Maarten Kolk (1980) and Guus Kusters (1979) have often been described as contemporary romantic poets. Their crafts-based work aims to make tangible the fleeting moments of beauty that they observe in the natural landscape. Wistful and gently melancholic, their work seeks to connect the elusive experience of observing beauty with the soul of the object that inspires such gestures of reflection. In this way, their craft unites abstraction with acts of poetic translation, making the imaginary and emotional into something physical and external.