Cyprien Gaillard: 'Beton Belvedere' and Dunepark at Stroom den Haag

Catching up on much needed reading I came across several essays and reviews worth note. The first is Cyprien Gaillard's exhibition at Stroom den Haag curated by Zoe Gray. The show covers Gaillard's project Beton Belvedere and Dunepark.


In Dunepark Gaillard's process is that of an archeologist, exhuming the distant horrofic past of Nazi occupation. "For Dunepark, Gaillard excavated a former Nazi communications bunker buried in the sand outside The Hague. The bunker had been built in early 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall, a system of defence against an Allied invasion. After the war, the bunker was simply buried under the sand – covering it was a less expensive option than destroying it." *1 Gaillard's excavation of the structure some fifty years later becomes a performative act calling to mind notions of history and the archive. Who controls the story of history, who decides what is included and left out from the archive. Borrowing from the tropes of traditional landscape painting and by default photography, Gaillard presents this subject matter not just as document but as a site of dialog through the juxtaposition and metaphoric relationships. This solid sand covered concrete block squatting within a "natural" setting of a beach. Visitors crawl over, along, and on top of its sandy surface, resembling a play park rather than its original darker history and icon of Nazi war time technological might and wonder.

Looking over Gaillard's other photographs the use of dichotomy as the means for conversation and dialog. In the Benton Belevedere photographs the otherwise uncanny white smoke hovering in the natural landscape, or in a palatial yard contrast with its setting. The ephemeral white cloud will disappear, will only remain for so long, fleeting in comparison with the care and upkeep of the Palace grounds.


Or in the photograph Chateau de Oiron which presents a path leading to the Chateau resurfaced in recycled concrete and glass from the recent demolished urban building blocks of urban spaces. Why are some structures preserved and cared for while others are slated to be torn down and buried.
Progress and history, what tells the story, who tells the story, archive and structure of history. Similar to the defining of North Americans political, cultural and historical identity through the constructed myth of Manifest Destiny Gaillard's photographs presents the dichotomy of structure and land as the site of fabrication and creation of history.


1.Rosales, Esperanza. "Cyprien Gaillard: 'Beton Belvedere' and Dunepark at Stroom den Haag" Afterall Spring 2009 Issue 20. http://www.afterall.org/current.html

Cyprien Gaillard: 'Beton Belvedere' and Dunepark at Stroom den Haag