Vliegtuig en vliegtuigonderdelen 1906 - 1945

Curator: Looking at Reijer Stolk's "Vliegtuig en vliegtuigonderdelen," dating somewhere between 1906 and 1945, I’m immediately drawn to its fragility. It's just pencil and graphite on paper, but it evokes this potent sense of nascent ambition. Editor: My first thought: schematic chaos! A whirlwind of graphite suggesting metal and possibility. There's something about the materiality – simple pencil on paper – juxtaposed with the complexity of aircraft design, that hints at the broader story of technology becoming a readily consumed fantasy, rendered cheaply. Curator: Exactly! You’ve nailed the fantasy element. The sketchiness allows us to fill in the blanks, projecting our own dreams of flight. It’s less about precision engineering and more about the raw impulse to conquer the sky. Do you feel the ghost of Leonardo da Vinci hovering around here? I always do... Editor: Perhaps, but with a critical twist. Da Vinci's inventions were often grounded in a desire for practical application, whereas Stolk's seems to flirt with a world increasingly shaped by mass production and mechanized warfare. It’s rendered abstraction isn’t just aesthetic. Its reflective of detachment and the cold geometries of power and what these new tools enabled.. The ease with which paper renders plane components… it's both mesmerizing and unsettling. Curator: I agree, the context is crucial, especially that date range spanning both the optimism of early flight and the brutal reality of WWII aerial warfare. Those ghostly lines do start to feel ominous when you think about the evolution from dream to devastating weapon. It makes you think about all of those artists at that time being confronted with that same duality. Editor: And about the hidden labour! Pencil production involved mining, manufacturing…consider the socio-economic infrastructure propping up even a "simple" sketch like this, how graphite literally is connected to this fantasy on the page. Even with this minimalist medium it implies complex resource networks that enabled these advances. Curator: Well, looking at it this way certainly opens up a dialogue I hadn't initially considered. Perhaps this sketch contains far more questions than answers about humans and progress, doesn't it? Editor: Indeed. From airborne aspiration to industrial reflection all encased within this understated drawing.