Look Around You! - The Fundatie Collection

Art can make you look at your surroundings differently. This presentation of the Fundatie Collection focuses on that specific power. Various artists, from Jacoba van Heemskerck to Jonathan van Doornum, and from Nola Hatterman to Vincent van Gogh, give their own twist to reality in their work. They zoom in on details, add something, leave something out, add colour and make the everyday extraordinary. Look around you! invites you to view the world through different eyes.

The way we look at things has been described extensively in art history. Over the centuries, various thinkers have described how our gaze is shaped. For example, as early as 103 AD, the Roman writer and scientist Pliny wrote about how artists use technique to deceive the eye. In the centuries that followed, cultural and technological developments changed the way we look at things. At the beginning of the 20th century, philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote an influential piece on how our gaze is fundamentally changing thanks to modern technologies such as film and photography. In it, he shows, for example, how our viewing, and thus our thinking, is influenced by mass media. So ask yourself: how do you view, and who or what influences the way you view the world?

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