Fountain (Bad Landlord), artificial ceiling (wood, plasterboard, hardware), irrigation pump, water, glazed ceramic, stainless steel - 2022

Fountain (Bad Landlord) consists of an installed suspended ceiling through which water drips into several ceramic buckets arranged around the floor - mimicking the appearance of a leaky ceiling and a temporary solution. The drop ceiling, made of construction studs and drywall, and designed to blend into the architectural space, conceals a pipework (connected by a concealed pipe to a nearby water reservoir) that directs water around the ceiling and allows it to drip through designated points in the sub-ceiling.

By intervening directly in the existing architecture of the exhibition space, Fountain (Bad Landlord) involves the institution itself in the question of precarity. It points to crises of real-estate within the world of art exhibitions, as well as recalling, for many, personal crises of rented housing. The ceramic buckets that catch the drips play a role simultaneously as art objects, fulfilling their function to the art exhibition space, as well as water receptacles, fulfilling their function as real buckets. Their materiality suggests the ossification of temporary solutions, as crises management becomes the norm.

Photos at Rijkakademie Open by Sander van Wettum

Installation views at Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste curated by Ellis Kat at Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, 2022:

photos by Bas Czerwinski