photo Jannes Linders
photo Jannes Linders
photo Jannes Linders
The Artwork
Under the title Portrait of a Recipient as a Door Handle, After a Drawing Produced by an Anonymous Philanthropist, British artist Chris Evans made bronze handles for the entrance doors of a number of banks on and around Coolsingel. He sees them both as “a portrait of the recipients” and as an ode to philanthropy: the unselfish care through donations of money by the wealthy. A bank embodies invisible capital flows and operates on the borderline between public and private interests. The figure on Evans’ handle focuses the gaze both inward and outward.
Chris Evans put the finishing touches on these public sculptures in 2014, which he made specifically for the banks on Coolsingel as part of the Coolsingel program. Rabobank on Blaak provided the site and the door. As with many projects, in Portrait of a Recipient as a Door Handle Evans collaborated with people whose involvement in making art normally remains hidden, such as philanthropists and collectors.
About SIR and the Coolsingel program, which began in 2007, Evans once said the following: ‘I have chosen to develop a project that deals with public and private interests in relation to philanthropy and the processes of commissioning, purchasing and displaying art by private organisations. I am going to realise an artwork as a real, functioning door handle installed on the doors of a number of banks in Rotterdam. The doors of banks have been chosen as sites for the sculptures because of the very obvious way that they mark the line between public and private interests; also they are symbols of the normally invisible flow of the capital through the city. The figure of the philanthropist has a double relation to this flow – at once accumulating capital, and at the same time redirecting it back into the public sphere. My hope is that this artwork causes people to reflect on the systems of power and influence (benign and otherwise) that shape our public spaces, and determine which cultural forms occupy them. I am open to the possibility of either a permanent or temporary installation of the works. The door handlers will be designed and fabricated in such a way that either is possible.’
As the Rabobank moved in 2019, the work was removed and placed in storage.
