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Casting #2 is an integrated aluminum melting furnace dedicated to Homo faber. I stack a big pile of wood with an aluminum core above a mold and light the wood from above. The wooden stack will burn from the inside out and melt the aluminum so it will fall into the mold. Homo faber is a research and development project funded by CBK Rotterdam.

Casting #2 happened at '3D-zine' at Foundation B.A.D. during Charlois Speciaal.
Made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fonds

Weg (road/gone) is an artistic documentation of an art perfomance by Maurice Meewisse. On a square behind the city hall of Utrecht he carries 30 tons of sand with a wheelbarrow up a wooden spiral. The performance lasts for over 13 hours, and while Meewisse slowly grows tired from his backbreaking task, the day unfolds around him and the city life passes by. Weg is a distillation of both the mindset and the physicality of manual labour.

Camera and editing: André Schreuders
duration 48 minutes.

Für Lise was build in the garden of the Ampelhaus during a residency in the summer of 2015

Maurice Meewisse went to the Ampelhaus with just one goal in mind: he wants his wife to come over for the opening. To make this possible he build in the least accessible part of the garden a house. On a pile of rubble and with that rubble he build a foundation and with other materials that lay rotting away in the garden he made the rest of the house.

In his latest works, Meewisse has explored themes of immigration and labour conditions. In Für Lise he assumes the role of an immigrant who after having established himself in his new country sends for his wife for whom he has built a home. The house motif is a powerful, universal and archetypal icon; a house is symbolic of the importance of security, rootedness and a sense of place in society. The house in the garden is a narrative sculpture, a romantic gesture, but also a reflection on the conditions of millions of migrating men through history and today who have left their families behind in the dream of a better life for all of them somewhere else.

Ampelhaus

'Diep Gaan' is an art project organized by Lucy in de Lucht, which in connection with the start of the Tour de France in Utrecht has invited artists, who go deep and challenge their own physical and mental limits. Maurice Meewisse developed the performance piece 'Weg', which he executed on the 7th of June.

With a shovel and a wheelbarrow he moved 20 cubic meters of sand (30 tons) which he dropped, wheelbarrow-full after wheelbarrow-full, from a spiral-shaped construction, so that a mountain formed in the middle. He worked continuously from 8.00 to 21.45, and the wheelbarrow was filled and emptied around 400 times. It became an image of concentration, endurance and willpower.


Photography by Baldwin Henderson
Commissioned by Lucy in de Lucht

In coorparation with André Schreuders a film will be made, more information will follow.

All in a days works is the result of a full day of branding a piece of driftwood found on the beach near Aarhus. Counting from 1 to 94 in Roman numbers.

exhibited at Sculpture inside
private collection

Work Eat Sleep is a series of sculptures entrenched in the ground, making visible an underworld otherwise unseen, pushed to the edges, repressed and rejected.

Both in form and content, Work Eat sleep tells a story about physical labour. An anonymous worker has set up a worksite camp. What the purpose of his labour is, is unknown to the viewer.

Sculpture by the Sea, Aarhus, Denmark

2012-2014 One of my old working boots covered in a layer of silver

Retrospectief is a wagon filled with wood from projects and artworks created over the last eight years.
Presented at De Coöperatieve in Hasselt, Belgium
Curated by Karen Wyckmans
De Coöperatieve

In 2014 I started growing my own handles for several hamers, axes, a pickaxe and a shovels. Several tools have different kinds of wood, from slow growing to quick growing. The tools in the picture is are hanging in a willow, which I hope to harvest in 2016.

Art Villa Garikula in Georgia organizes every year Fest I Nova, a festival for contemporary art. Teams were invited to Fest I Nova to build pavilions. Dirk van Lieshout designed and build the Dutch pavilion. I was asked to make a work around his pavilion. Bivouac is a work that makes it possible for people to actually be around the pavilions, to live there. During the build up and the first days of the festival I created a complete camp and lived there, with places to sleep, work and shit.

The third picture has the work of Dirk van Lieshout in the background.

Bivouac has been supported by CBK Rotterdam.

Garikula

In Coding Driftwood I try to reveal some of the mysteries surrounding driftwood. I picked up 30 pieces on the beaches near Hasting and St Leonards in the UK and from the beaches on the Danish westcoast. With a set of branding irons, made out of shovels, I marked them with some data: a number and a place and sometimes the date and my initials. After exhibiting the pieces in The SPACE, St Leonards, I put 20 back into the sea, so somebody can find them on a beach and know where they have been at one point. The other ten I brought home and they can be rented for a period of 25 years after which they must be thrown back in the sea.

The SPACE

The Cheng-Long Wetlands International Environmental Art Project in Taiwan was in 2014 focused around the fishing huts in the village. I made a plan to repair one complete hut, spread out over a series of huts and build a folly based on the repairs. I ended up repairing two walls, two roofs, two doors, two windows and one floor spread out over nine different huts. On the pictures is one repaired wall and one repaired window. (at least I repaired the repair done by the owner of the hut)

Cheng-Long Wetlands art project blog

Pictures of the folly can be send on request.

Performance i.c.w. Jordy Walker. I chopped down a tree while Jordy played songs inspired by music where working rhytms come together with music. Performed in the garden of Foundation B.A.D. during Kunstweekend Charlois, in Rotterdam

Photography by Janine Schrijver

Together with the team of Observatorium, Yasser Ballemans, de Urbanisten and Daan Draait we created a new perspective on the Museumpark commissioned by the New Institute.

The pictures show Milk and Fire, a performance around a campfire, about what the Museumpark was, is and might be. This performance is a cooperation with Yasser Ballemans and Daan Draait, the stone 'garden' is a design by Observatorium and de Urbanisten

The photos are made by Fred Ernst.

Yasser Ballemans
Observatorium
De Urbanisten
Het Nieuwe Instituut

Bål is Danish for bonfire. During Kunsten i Bevægelse I collected wood in three different villages with the use of a little wagon. With this wood I made a big bonfire in each village. I invited the suppliers of wood to come to the fire while I served them self-flavoured-snaps.

This project resulted in a photo serie with seven photos, six with wagons and one with the stack.

Kunsten i Bevægelse

Black Green Yellow is a solo project hosted by KuS, Heerlen NL. At a lot of places in Heerlen I put rape-seeds in the ground with the plan to transform the city into a fuel producing city.

Open until the 22nd of September

KuS

During Oerol, an outdoor theatre/art festival on Terschelling, the Netherlands, I did a performance that lasted 9 days. Every day I used my shovel and wheelbarrow to work on the creation of a ramp. Basically I was building a huge workshop on the beach: throughout history ramps have been used as tools to build big monuments.

Oerol

At Sculpture by the Sea, in Aarhus DK, I presented 'North Sea Driftwood Fence'. A fence made out of driftwood found at the Danish west coast. I collected it and processed it with a chainsaw into timber.

Sculpture by the Sea

'Muurtje' (little wall) presented at the 'Aanschouw', the smallest gallery in the Netherlands. The bricks are made out of clay found in 'Maasland'

de Aanschouw

October:
Melk, groupshow, Marrum, NL,
Website: Melk

September:
Kunsten i bevaegelse, groupproject, Mid- and West Jutland, Denmark, 1/15 september
Website: Kunsten i bevaegelse

photography by Fieke van Berkom

Solo exhibition at Onomatopee, Eindhoven

Maurice Meewisse keeps iconic archaic, archetype men in mind. He creates living or work conditions for his men. He creates their tools, he digs their holes, stages their labor. His is not research-based artwork, but a performative setting in which he constructs what he imagines life was – or, could have been – like.

Meewisse’s work can be seen as renewed romanticism, one that negates a scientific rational attitude, and favors a subjective, emotion driven course. One that puts the artist in the center of his work and leaves the audience to feel they’ve walked into someone’s private space.

Onomatopee

For the first week of september I was invited by 'de Fabriek' to participate in a exhibition around 'Kasteel Heeswijk', orginized by BKKC.

I presented 'the Lion of Heeswijk', inspired by the large amount of stone lions all over the castle. My lion is a faceless sculpture that is made as a monument for the faceless builders of the castle.

Next to the lion I also presented a old canon that I found in a ditch along the field.

BKKC
De Fabriek

Mont Nord is een mountain made of 300m3 sand with on top a viewing platform. During Route du Nord it functioned as a stage, a place for intimate performance and as a viewing tower, and as it turned out, as a playground for children.

During the programming there was always somebody working on maintaining the mountain.

Programmed were the 'Tiroler Plezier Groep', Jordy Walker and Lydia van Veen, A chess tournament, Convoi Exceptional and others.

Route du Nord

with thanks to:
Willem Romijn, sand-supplier
Route du Nord
RSR de Ivorend Toren

Secret Gardens at TENT Rotterdam'. Groupshow

from the 5th of april till 10th of june

TENT