'I will not forget anytime in the remembrance of existence and extinct'
(A Saadi Shirazi poem sung by Jalal Taj Esfahani. The Persian text I put in a translate machine and chose this sentence. I have no certainty if the translation is correct at all.)

(2015)

The gesture to recapture an atmosphere of personal importance derives, Bachelard states, from the basis of our memories and sensitivity for space from the house we grew up in. What one experiences is a collapse of chronological events and origins of memories that turn into scattered fragments. One projects thoughts, fantasies, sentiments and desires into objects and materials that symbolise our inner reality and manifested in the physical retreat. Physicalising a memory is a desire for revival and reliving an experience that evidently can never be correctly constructed.

The interiors of our retreats are a landscape of our feelings. We project our thoughts, fantasies, desires into objects and materials that are charged with memories and associations. They are filled with mysteries of which the origins of these associations are not necessarily clear. Even standard furniture or fake materials can get sentimental values merely because of connecting it to people or situations that are of personal importance. This nostalgia is slightly off and twisted when connecting them to their original purposes. The Installation is based on keep- sakes and materials associated in homes of my Dutch and Bulgarian family and friends. A display of nostalgia, endearment and its pathetic side. Materials such as standard socialist furniture made of fake, glossy wood or white (plastic) objects, glass constructions, gold-coating, plexiglass, isolation material that lies next to parquet pieces. Functionally unpractical, unpractically exciting. The installation is an attempt to understand this physical world in fragments that is the creator of our inner reality and finally our drive to recollect.

Clay works in the photographs belong to the work of Judith Geerts. Curating by both Judith and I.

photography: Gert Jan van Rooij