The award of 2014: unique design by Vittorio Roerade

For the first edition of the Piket Art Prizes, The Hague-based visual artist Vittorio Roerade (1962) was asked to design a fitting sculpture. Roerade was honored by the commission, he tells us in his studio in Bink 36, the creative hub in the former PTT complex on Binckhorstlaan. Roerade is a versatile artist who has spent his entire career experimenting with materials and genres. He draws, paints, writes, and sculpts – working in 'periods', where he monomaniacally pursues and develops a particular idea. He always has ideas, which come from everywhere. His sources of inspiration include music, science, books... he reads and listens non-stop. Ultimately, everything he creates revolves around humanity, “as fragile as the plague, yet simultaneously incredibly strong.”

With chairwoman Louise de Blécourt, Roerade quickly agreed that the ‘totems’ he had previously made – vertical, bronze sculptures adorned with shapes and figures – would be a good starting point. Roerade: "Bronze is actually quite a dull material, but I find the symbolism of bronze casting beautiful. You immortalize something, you give it a name. And a totem reaches upward, it’s a positive and powerful symbol – just like a prize.”

Roerade was given free rein. Aside from the maximum age of the winners and the disciplines to be honored, he knew nothing else. “I quickly came to an ode to life itself, which is so much greater than art or whatever profession you practice. Life is one dynamic whole, a system in which everything is interconnected.”

For the decoration of the sculptures, he collected twigs, seeds, found objects, and dozens of little plastic figures and animals. He glued them to the totems in spiral, creeping "strands." This resulted in a kind of vertical "Noah’s Ark," teeming with life, populated by human and animal species that do not push each other aside, but together form one bustling world order.

Unique prizes

No two totems are the same. Roerade has hidden a few small clues on each piece that indicate the art form it represents: for dance, a couple of small dancers; for painting, a paintbrush. For theater, it was more challenging to find such a symbolic object; the choice ultimately fell on a stage light.

“Have fun with your own ideas.”

Roerade outsourced the casting to “the only foundry in the Netherlands that can cast using vacuum casting.” In addition to the forms, it is the hollows, the empty spaces between the figures, that are crucial here. They give the sculptures, which still weigh seven kilograms each, a lightness that demonstrates great material control. Roerade did the polishing himself – a heavy, precise task that he never continued for more than a few hours at a time. “If you hold the sculpture against the lathe for just a fraction of a second too long, the figures could get damaged. And of course, you shouldn’t drop it either."

It went well. Every Piket Art Prize winner will soon go home with a unique work of art that will outlive the occasion for which it was made. Does Roerade have a motto he would like to pass on to the young winners? He thinks for a moment. “Have fun,” he says with a smile. “Have fun with your own ideas.”