Mai 2026
Künstler: Sjouke Schaafsma
Sehnsucht nach Berlin, Zwei.
Some 40 years ago I made a series of small sculptures or objects from cardboard boxes that I covered in a thick layer of grey paint mixed with sand. The series was called Sehnsucht nach Berlin.
I have a long standing relationship with Berlin. My uncle Sjouke, now deceased, lived in Berlin since World War ll and we visited him from time to time. He was the only brother of my mother and her only close relative. The first pictures of me in Berlin were from when I was 4 and were made in the zoo. My most vivid recollection is of a visit when I was about 11,during which I roamed the streets of Berlin with my older brother Herman. At that time, around 1968, in Berlin there were still a lot of empty, sandy spaces between remaining buildings and ruins of buildings. In the street where my uncle lived his was the only remaining building on that side of the street. Only at the far corner there still stood the remains of the corner building. A tree was growing on the top of that ruin. In between an empty, flat, sandy surface. For many years after graduating from Art School in Groningen I have had the desire and the intention to move to and live in Berlin. It never happened.
What I am showing now in the Little Window Gallery is called Sehnsucht nach Berlin, Zwei. It’s a collage of small strips of grey cardboard. It is an unintentional residue of the working process on another group of works (the Book Pile Poem Objects) and was only used as protection in that process. Now they form the skyline of an imaginary city that might be Berlin.
Some 40 years ago I made a series of small sculptures or objects from cardboard boxes that I covered in a thick layer of grey paint mixed with sand. The series was called Sehnsucht nach Berlin.
I have a long standing relationship with Berlin. My uncle Sjouke, now deceased, lived in Berlin since World War ll and we visited him from time to time. He was the only brother of my mother and her only close relative. The first pictures of me in Berlin were from when I was 4 and were made in the zoo. My most vivid recollection is of a visit when I was about 11,during which I roamed the streets of Berlin with my older brother Herman. At that time, around 1968, in Berlin there were still a lot of empty, sandy spaces between remaining buildings and ruins of buildings. In the street where my uncle lived his was the only remaining building on that side of the street. Only at the far corner there still stood the remains of the corner building. A tree was growing on the top of that ruin. In between an empty, flat, sandy surface. For many years after graduating from Art School in Groningen I have had the desire and the intention to move to and live in Berlin. It never happened.
What I am showing now in the Little Window Gallery is called Sehnsucht nach Berlin, Zwei. It’s a collage of small strips of grey cardboard. It is an unintentional residue of the working process on another group of works (the Book Pile Poem Objects) and was only used as protection in that process. Now they form the skyline of an imaginary city that might be Berlin.
Weitere Arbeiten von Sjouke (Slideshow):