Fontein Maashaven (2022)

Jeroen Jongeleen

foto Jannes Linders

foto Jannes Linders

foto Jeroen Jongeleen

foto Jeroen Jongeleen

Fontein Maashaven with Jeroen Jongeleen

Fontein Maashaven with Jeroen Jongeleen

The artwork

In the Maashaven, on the occasion of the Paleis Maashaven project, an artwork by Jeroen Jongeleen was unveiled in February 2022. SIR asked him to make an intervention in this area, on the border between Charlois and Feijenoord. Jongeleen found it a tricky question because of area development and encroaching gentrification. In such trends, art is often instrumentalized in a way that does not benefit the residents, quite the contrary.

In this area, in a corner of the water, Jongeleen discovered a water outlet that occasionally lets water bubble up or spray up. He decided to label this an ‘objet trouvé’ as a fountain. An incongruous and unpredictable fountain, a ‘punk version’ rather, which is at odds with the neatly designed design drawings for the park planned in the Maashaven. His fountain is an ode to the frayed edges and crease zones, to the city that does not try to pretend to be better than it is. Moreover, this is a work of art that cannot be encapsulated in the city marketing in which art likes to be used as hip and ‘street art’. Because this park is being built right where the fountain is. It is one or the other.

Year
2022
Location
Maashaven
Dimensions
max 2.50 m high
Client
Sculpture International Rotterdam
Owner
the artist

The location

Fontein Maashaven is located in the water Maashaven East Side/South Side. A tile in the sidewalk helps the passerby on his way.

For the original satellite program of Paleis Maashaven, Jeroen Jongeleen proposed Useless, a group exhibition he initiated for the neighborhoods around Maashaven station, featuring hidden artworks created by international artists. The exhibition was to be realized in 2020, but could not be implemented due to national and international corona restrictions.

Fontein Maashaven would have been part of this: a point in the water of the harbor declared a work of art that bubbles up from the depths like a spring at unknown times of the day. Just behind the dike, in the waters of Maashaven, Fontein Maashaven shows itself at irregular times, then very briefly visible to pedestrians from the sidewalk.

Jeroen Jongeleen

Jeroen Jongeleen

Jeroen Jongeleen is an adventurous artist, constantly seeking unexpected paths in his explorations of the urban landscape. His works are like ‘tracks’ that straddle the line between activism and intervention art, heavily influenced by the art movements of the last century’s avant-garde. Like a contemporary member of the Situationist International, Jongeleen speaks with his hands, leaving his tracks while running and climbing: an ode to the rough edges of urban life.

He once left rebellious plastic shopping bags on city buildings, as a ‘triumph of the wind on high-rise buildings’, and bicycle tires in a tree. His smileys – less than happy – give the passerby a wink from yet another state of mind. From his love of the elephant trail, he endlessly ran his own grooves in the grass. He moved reconstruction artworks to save them from the demolition hammer. You have to find his tracks, but once you discover his language, the city also shows itself from a different side.

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