Re-sculpted in Time: Sanatorium Zonnestraal

Overview

Drifting between data and images and hovering amidst seemingly incompatible moods: Tarkovsky’s cinematic dreams on the one hand and Zonnestraal’s utopian architecture on the other. Sanatorium Zonnestraal (1928): Famous symbol of enlightened rational thinking par excellence: transparency, light, air, tranquillity and space. ‘One of modern architecture's most important buildings’ (Wikipedia). The contrast with the sick person in need of healing could hardly be greater. Van Bakel has scanned the sanatorium building and converted it to 'point clouds’ that turn into models where you seem to move in between - or rather: seem to fly through - as in a dream. He combines these ghostly, whimsical images with the fragmented dream images of buildings, land…