Koen Kloosterhuis

Spaghetti Rain (2022), as presented at P////AKT, video documentation by Emma van der Put

Spaghetti Rain (2022)

Three reanimated crows – inspired by their plastic lookalikes placed in gardens to scare away pigeons, and animatronics found in haunted house rides – 'greet' the visitor as they cross the threshold and wander through the exhibition space; turning them into an intruder. Within the space, the crows create a domain of privacy and secrecy that is inherent to most backyards. The electronics, attached on the outside of the birds instead of being concealed within, function as external organs meant to force the stuffed crows to speak. It is a single voice, belonging to one crow, that echoes its way through the second and has almost disappeared by the time it reaches the third.
Backed into the corner, slightly lifted from the floor, stands the untreated and vulnerable prefab garden house that, instead of providing a solution to survive in an inhospitable environment – like its predecessor the log cabin – has become a place associated with leisure, relaxation and daydreaming. A sanctuary from the outside world placed on the edge of the domestic sphere; a room at the end of the garden.
Scattered across the floor lie chunks of concrete. The wings of an angel, a leprechaun’s head, the hands of a chimpanzee, Ganesha’s trunk: the remains of a carefully dissected group of garden statues. Fragments of bodies that are endlessly reproducible. Clones and copies not bound to time or space – degraded to decoration, reduced to kitsch. A strand of spaghetti covered in red sauce has fallen from above on top of the debris.
Between the rubble, a series of ghostly holograms float. They seem to exist both inside the empty wooden house, as well as on its outside, in the centre of the exhibition space. These ‘Nine Proposals’ were created by cutting off the various body parts belonging to a selection of already existing garden statues: a Pharaoh, a dog, a Moai-head, an angel, Ganesha, a Xi’an warrior, a leprechaun, and a chimpanzee. Their severed torsos, limbs and heads were recombined and merged with a digital scan of the artist’s body, resulting in a series of monstrous figures; proposals for new garden statues.

Spaghetti Rain (2022), as presented at P////AKT, photographed by Charlotte Markus