Hans van Bentem
MONUMENT 1997

On the square in front of the University stands an enormous, bright turquoise ceramic sculpture by Hans van Bentem. Attached to its sides, reminiscent of figureheads on ancient sailing ships, are the figures of an angel and a phoenix. There is also an all-seeing eye, and at the top, a heart, crowned by flames. At its foot is a crouching panther, and the base of the piece is formed to resemble rocks. The sculpture is a strange mixture of elements that draws one’s attention even from a distance.

Van Bentem produced this striking work especially for this location, to mark the entrance to the campus. The elements which make up the sculpture were derived from popular culture, nature and classic cultural history.

“At the time, pretty much an entire neighborhood was plowed up to make way for The Hague University of Applied Sciences, and with this image I wanted to also create a kind of ‘historical memory’. All the symbols converge in the large picture, and ‘echoes’ of it appear throughout the building, creating a connection between the outside and the inside.”

With his images, he seeks to ‘freeze’ contemporary culture – that is to say, the culture of postmodernism, in which symbols and forms from various religions, regions and eras are appropriated, and mixed together. These are thus forms which are recognizable as such, but are lacking the specific meaning that they have (or had) in their original context. In this large sculpture, Van Bentem juxtaposes them like a collage.

Elsewhere in and around the university building, various different elements from this work reappear as separate sculptures using different colour schemes. The angel appears on a brick wall to the left of the entrance, this time coated in a white glaze. The panther creeps across an inner courtyard, and the flaming heart blazes in bright red and yellow in a coffee corner next to the vending machines.