Jet Nijkamp

Codex | Caudex – a tree project
2015
installation with drawings & video
Codex | Caudex – a tree project
2015
Installation with drawings & video
Canadian poplar
2015
charcoal/pastel on paper
119 x 118 cm

Artist statement

A city park is a living organism, with its trees as its lungs and its paths as its veins. These veins transport life: visitors on their way to special sites, feeding them with music, playing children, lovers etc.

Some trees witness this life with their barks full of carved or brushed texts and symbols: initials, full names, hearts, obscenities etc., like tattoos on a skin. The climbing tree in the Amsterdam Vondelpark, a chestnut tree, is crammed with these. Trained as a palaeographer I tried to decipher the inscriptions and paints, seeing them as a volatile historical layer that reflects the zeitgeist. Would city parks in other cities bear the same kind of testimonies? Or would they also reflect ‘cultural’ differences? A small study on the barks of the huge beeches in the famous Englische Garten in Munich seems to confirm this.

In the old Rome beech trunks (to which the word caudex refers) were sliced into wooden writing tablets. Bound at one side they became the first books (codices). Today the smooth beech barks in city parks function similarly as notebooks for impulsive thoughts and feelings.

 

www.jetnijkamp.nl
Codex | Caudex – a tree project
2015
installation with drawings & video
Codex | Caudex – a tree project
2015
Installation with drawings & video
Canadian poplar
2015
charcoal/pastel on paper
119 x 118 cm