INTRODUCTION / Arnold Schalks

A. One of the first things that the Canadian visual artist Annette Witteman showed me after her arrival in the Netherlands was a picture of her most recent work. An elongated fixture, driven by an electric motor, larger than a human being. Four tubes of fluorescent light, fixed on the vertical shaft, illuminate the polyester quilt batting fitted around an iron rod frame: A giant half-eaten-apple-shaped lamp shade executing a slow pirouette on a small concrete base. The work is entitled Core.

'Core', Kelowna Art Gallery, 1997.

 

B. Among the notes I made for my future collaboration with Annette, I found the following sentence: 'peeling apples in the Space-Cabin. (The Space-Cabin is the panoramic-elevator of the Rotterdam Eurotower, slowly revolving upwards to a height of 185 meters.)

 

C. The 'apple' became a recurring theme in our conversations. A, miraculous, almost straight line led to the work 'peeling for the arts/schillen voor de kunst'. We haven't let the apple fall far from the tree.