CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

NB please note that the exhibition closed in 2022, but the exact date is unknown.

Residual at Bentheim castle is part of the sculpture project Raumsichten at the Kunstwegen Open Museum. The presentation by artist Willem de Rooij consists of an entirely transparent display case enclosing Jacob van Ruisdael’s View of Bentheim Castle from the North-West (ca. 1655) and a number of apparatuses that maintain its conservation requirements.

Ruisdael’s painting, which dates from around 1655 was only rediscovered in 1988. Until then it was considered lost. The local district bought it at auction and exhibited it for 23 years in Frenswegen Abbey in Nordhorn. It now returns to the place it was intended for: Bentheim Castle. The painting is the property of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung.

The presentation is accompanied by a publication titled Residual. The publication takes up the tension between object and frame, concrete matter and immaterial structures that define de Rooij’s installation. An introduction by Dirck Möllmann situates Ruisdael’s Bentheim paintings historically and economically. In his catalogue essay Sven Lütticken explores the implications of de Rooij’s contextualization of Ruisdael, focusing on the aesthetic and political intervention of de Rooij’s reframing of an Old Dutch Master. De Rooij’s work is placed in the field of contemporary art as much as it is an innovative contribution to the study of Jacob van Ruisdael.