Timo Mank
CURATOR - BRICOLEUR - GALERIST

Winter Works, Red Garden 

 


Early December 2023 it became clear that the genocide on the Palestinian people went unhinged and with complete impunity, broadcasted in daily updates. 

I had found a table clock at the local thrift store, removed the clockwork and pondered how I could use the transparent housing for a kind of Wardian cache with a Natura Mort. A new piece named Red Garden took shape when the New York Times featured a front page piece titled "No safe place to shelter" on December 5 2023.









Red Garden, assemblage 2024

Shooting a fleeing family of innocent Palestinians in Gaza, then shooting the ambulance that came to rescue the last small child amongst a car of dead. Governments crimes against humanity that will continue unless the world locks gaze and holds them to account.

Loving the red garden

with all the Squirrels laughing

and the Redstart singing,

all among countless happy flowers

The studio extention, building the porch

  




 


 

 



The rigging of the construction gives a strong feel of a ship, an idea to keep the roof stable at strong winds.

 Speaking of ships... yet another ship in the woods comes to mind,  the 320 ton steamship from Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog 1982), wich they successfully pulled over a mountain ridge in the Amazone forest, using a complex system of pulleys and aided by the ship's anchor windlass. Yes, lets think of ships and dreams and forrests.



 

How it was envisioned and how it goes


September 2023






Rose Hobart, entrance piece



 




The idea of a porch with translucent draperies or mosquito netting is heavily influenced by Joseph Cornell's experimental collage film from 1936. Cornell created the film by cutting and re-editing the Universal film East of Borneo  (1931) into one of America's most famous surrealist short films. Cornell was fascinated by the star of East of Borneo and named his short film after her. I was triggered just by the obvious connection via the name of the moviestar, but also by the idea of napping during a windstill summer afternoons.


It is exactly this kind of atmosphere I seek for the studio, carried away dreaming nestled among woods, bamboos, lush ferns  and the impressive towering backdrop of conifers. Now I think of it... How appropriate would it be to paint a small portrait of Rose as a hommage to our vague connection trough times, and hang it somewhere at the entrance? Well, well we should first construct the transparent corrugated roof.





The extended deck



The ramshackle studio early September



 

 

The Porch 

JULY 2023

Imagine the spacious veranda in front of the studio, a comfortable seat or sofa, a book, the silence in the garden on a warm summer day, the plants bending in the dryness and the sun. Then a gentle rain trickles down... but you don't have to go inside, oh no! Right above your head is that airy structure with transparent polycarbonate plates. Listen to the sound of the rain, maybe a blackbird call or one of the woodpeckers?





 

 





The Ships (archway for the studio)

MAY 2023

 

new piece in preparation. The ships of Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, the Dutch 'poète maudit'... mounted above te entrance door of my new studio forming an archway

De zee, hoe diep en hoe ver,. Is zijn ontastbaar gebied;. 
Alleen een schip en een ster. Peilen tezaam dit verschiet.

 


 


Jan Wolkers reads the poem by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff










Sentimental vitrine (small)

MARCH 24 2023

The word is "Pareidolia" a psychic phenomenon, a form of illusion in which someone believes that he perceives recognizable things in randomn objects, and attribute special significance to them.

I definetively sense a new reality model pressing forward, it will be titled "Sentimental vitrine I"












 







March 20 2023







Wood lump = Eroded dune.









19th century Ameland souvenir, hand colored black and white photograph pasted behind facet cut glass





Sentimental vitrine (small), 31 x 25 x 19 cm mixed media and found objects, April 18th 2023

"Dreams and wishful thinking  
makes for certainties gamble 
against the odds of possibilities"

 


 

  



The Mother Book 

Writing a book about you and your Mother, March 11 2023


 





Sonnet 60
"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.