Tonneke Sengers

The work of Tonneke Sengers is strongly related to architecture.
From the beginning.

She studied monumental design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy where, entirely in the tradition of the Arnhem School, the connection between art and architecture, was the main theme.  Sengers works with minimal means: lines, screens and squares with which optimum three-dimensional effects are created. This abstract geometrical language can be applied on every scale without losing power.  The design of the wall sculptures "Up the Wall" is first drawn on the computer and then carved in aluminum on the maximum size for the laser cutter. The squares are deepened and like boxes or chests placed against the wall. In these frames space is caught, a part of the wall is inserted in the piece of art that forms both a frame and a blank. The open-worked aluminum is giving an important role to the wall behind and the space between them. Composition and color are accurately defined to bring forward the intended dialogue between illusion and reality.  Shadow has full scope in the defined area like in a resonance-box. The counter-shape becomes an interval in which the effects of Sengers interventions resonate. They form, indirectly, a new and often surprising reality.  It looks like Sengers' work is coming to you in two ways. You have the idea of being able to decipher something and at the same time you can disappear without effort in the space the work displays to you.