Contemporary idols in Tilburg
Not Vital - HEAD - 2016Kim Dacres - Peaceful Perch - 2018-19
From 26 June to 2 October 2022, Lustwarande presents "Godhead: Idols in times of crisis", the 12th edition of the annual exhibition of contemporary sculpture in De Oude Warande park in Tilburg, the Netherlands.
Source: Lustwarande - Platform for Contemporary Sculpture ·· Images: Not Vital, "HEAD" (2016) ·· Kim Dacres, "Peaceful Perch" (2018-19).
Since 2015, Lustwarande - Platform for Contemporary Sculpture has been organising exhibitions of contemporary sculpture in the baroque gardens of De Oude Warande in Tilburg, the Netherlands. This year, the exhibition reflects on the concept of the 'idol' in the current era, in which people and stories revered in the past have been challenged by historians and social movements alike. The exhibition includes works by Alma Allen, Marieke Bolhuis, Gisela Colón, Kim Dacres, Hans Josephsohn, Susanne Ring, Lukas Schmenger, Henk Visch and Not Vital.
The Lustwarande explains that “the idol (from the Greek eidolon, meaning 'image') was developed to express myth and faith in human form. However, over the course of history, devotion has increasingly given way to secular veneration. The idol gradually came to be worshipped and admired as an aesthetic, autonomous object. The erection of statues and monuments in the public space is a result of this shift. As the power of the Church waned and secular power increasingly took its place, statues and monuments in squares and parks were not only objects of worship but also a strong representation and perpetuation of the ideology of the ruling power. While the new iconoclasm shows that images of idols can lead to great division, the strongest power of idols in general is still to promote connection and solidarity.”
Thus, the exhibition “investigates the power of contemporary figurative and abstract sculpture as idols by presenting a connected yet very diverse group of works which, to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or unconsciously, refer to the tradition of devotional sculpture, the statue, the monument, the totem and the fetish, all in their own individual way.”

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