Interview with Robert Hengeveld
by Xenia Benivolski

Robert Hengeveld’s ambitious installation Natural Revision combines manufactured landscaping products—synthetic rocks, trees and grass—with wildlife decoys and proto-natural sounds to create a visual and acoustic environment suggestive of Algonquin Park but more plastic in form. The resulting installation sets a playing field in which our relationship to the natural landscape can be explored against our growing comfort with the synthetic.

Robert’s exhibition opens on March 25th, 2011 at Mercer Union.



Robert Hengeveld, Natural Revision, 2011


Xenia Benivolski: So this nature theme is something I have seen in several of your works, do you want to talk about that?

Robert Hengeveld: I don’t know if it’s so much of a nature theme as it is a continual exploration of the relationship between reality and fiction, and that has been a focal point for sometime. I guess that natural element comes out of a reflection of the world we live in and that world contains an increasing amount of synthetic products that stand in for our natural environment. So, I think this is where any nature aspect comes into it, but I wouldn’t necessarily think of it as having a environmental focus. It is a certainly a part of the work but it’s not necessarily a central theme within it. I think I’m more interested in what we consider to be real or authentic, and what we deem as being fake, and what influences those decisions.

XB: Can you tell me some more about how you developed this dynamic?

RH: I guess it goes very far back… I had at one time tried to create an authentic reconstruction of something and in the process of that I realized that no matter what I do, when you try and recreate something it’s always fictional or lacking in the end. So I then began to explore and play around with those ideas, pushing the boundaries between the authentic and the fictional and exploring the outer limits as to what we will allow ourselves to accept as being real. We already do live in a society in which there are a lot of synthetic objects and we sometimes choose to accept these as being either real or an adequate stand-in for what it references. In my work I’m often just giving these stand-ins an additional little push.

XB: Do you feel like it’s always a stand-in or maybe sometimes it becomes its own thing, as in it develops its own presence?

RH: Sure, I think things like Disney or Las Vegas for example have certainly become their own thing. The reference to a reference…. or the save symbol on the top of your computer. I wonder how maybe people have never even used a floppy disk, but they still use and understand the symbol as a means of saving data. So no matter where in our culture, there are always points where there is a reference to a reference to a reference and things develop their own presence.

XB: Kind of like in language

RH: Yeah.

XB: Considering that your work emulates a natural environment, do you see it as a stand-in or as something that stands on its own? Maybe Both?

RH: I see it as something completely different, something that is reflecting or rubbing off its surrounding, but not necessarily existing as a stand-in or an extension of the natural environment – more as a response to. It exists as its own autonomous setting. It certainly references the things outside of itself but I don’t see it as being an extension of our surroundings, no.

XB: In terms of aesthetic, how would you describe the creative process that goes on?

RH: It’s been an exciting installation to work on. With much of my work I have a lot of the project figured out in advance. There are always somethings to figure out along the way but not to the same extent. With this project there were certainly decisions made along time ago, but also many that developed here on site. Some of these are aesthetic considerations. A lot of them have been around balancing a reference to the landscape while making sure it doesn’t simply turn into a panorama. I’m interested for example in what can still pass as a landscape. Can boxes simply piled up stand in as a cliff? On the one side, things are thrown together to stand-in for landscape and on the other side, high-end synthetics turf and whatnot, which are really manufactured as a substitute for nature, for reality. So yes, there are some aesthetic decisions but many of the decisions were concerned with finding a balance between being a reference to the world outside while making sure it doesn’t simply become a model. I am more interested in exploring the limits of what we will still accept as being a reference to landscape.

XB: How much do the different spaces where you show influence your work?

RH: It depends quite a bit on the piece, for something like this I would say very much so. With other works such as a recent piece Kentucky Perfect it does as well but in a very different way. It’s a modular piece and so it can be shown in varying lengths and it has been, depending on the space, and this does impact how the work is seen and understood. The ratio between the amount of lawn being maintained to the amount of mechanism or equipment changes depending on how it is shown. I’ve found that there is a greater tension when the length is shorter because the amount of equipment needed to maintain such a small piece of turf becomes that much more absurd. On the other hand, when it’s shown quite long the sheer size of the work become more prominent. So with this work the space really has impacted how it’s shown and it does with other works as well, particularly installation based works.



Robert Hengeveld, Kentucky Perfect, mixed media installation, 2010

XB: Where are you from?

RH: I grew up in North York which I guess is now technically Toronto but I think it’s different than growing up downtown. There wasn’t very much going on when I was growing up. And then I traveled around for a bit, I lived in Victoria for about four years where I did an MFA and taught for awhile, and traveled around here and there. I came back to Toronto, I guess it was about 2007. It’s been good. Feels like home for the moment.

XB: Is there anything else about this piece that you want to tell me about?

RH: I guess one of several things I’ve been exploring with this work is the ability to suspend disbelief. One subject that continues to interest me is how we perceive and understand reality, and that kind of a reaches into larger existential questions as well – how we see and understand the world, what is an authentic reality anyhow, is there a reality beyond the one we decide to accept or is it actually pretty black and white, real and unreal? In terms of this project in particular, there are a lot of subtle things going on and I do like that it unfolds slowly. For example when you enter the installation, you sort of enter from backstage as it were or from behind the scenes. You’re in on the fiction from the start and yet you can allow yourself to engage with the work as a landscape, a carpet can stand in for grass, a bundled mat as a rock. Another aspect of the project is that it reacts to people’s presence in the space, but I wouldn’t really call it interactive. I see it more as being relational. I guess I want people’s presence to animate the space, and that the work is somewhat dead or idle when people aren’t around. Want I wouldn’t want is some sort of gimmicky – if I do this, this happens – which I always find breaks down into a simple game of triggering an action. I always find that it ends up becoming a distraction from engaging with the work in any other way. The way I’ve set things up or programmed them eliminates any of that immediate cause and effect – I guess there’s no interactive cookies. At the same time the work is animated and reacts to people’s presence in the space – their being there give the project life in a way. There’s probably a lot more I could say about the work but maybe I’ll just leave it there.