1 Mar - 31 May 2022

Luuk Smits ( Netherlands )

At the ZK/U residency Luuk Smits presented artworks depicting ZK/U in its current state of transformation. Over the three month residency, Smits has explored the (de)construction of the building, with an interest in tracing the journeys of the materials used. His research has taken him to discover origins ranging from Berlin and China to Ukraine. As well as to recognize the different techniques and materials used over time, from the building’s advent as a train station in 1890 to its more recent renovation in 2012. During this time, he became more interested in the act of investigation itself, dealing with questions that remain unanswered.

Smits created two works developed in parallel to this research. Both are created through Smits’ approach to artmaking as a thinking space, to explore, test, create, question, and play with materials and the information they introduce. Smits´ created an artwork on the façade, a totem-like sculpture comprising an assembly of materials collected from ZK/U. He also installed a video installation featuring construction-related footage that the artist has collected via the internet, on the construction site. Taken together, the two express the inherent global-ness of the local, with the materials used at ZK/U deriving from fabrication sites, construction processes, and labour forces across the world.