The work, which weighs almost 8 tons, was installed on the bank of the lake near the Prinsenkasteel. It was no easy feat to move the work, because apart from being extremely heavy it is also 7m long, almost 3m wide and 3.5m high. It was carried out successfully by the Sarens crane company. Flanagen started out from elementary forms. A spiral and a triangle were cut into a sheet of steel and then drawn out of it. In this work, Flanagan explores the tensions between two and three dimensions, stable and unstable, hard and soft. He puts the rigidity of the metal into perspective by ‘snipping’ the sheet and ‘folding’ it like a sheet of paper.
This sculpture was made with the help of the Sidmar steel company in Ghent in 1980, and was commissioned by Jan Hoet for his controversial exhibition Art in Europe after ’68. During this exhibition the work stood in front of the door of the abbey on Sint-Pietersplein. From April 2005 it stood at Dok Zuid, near the Dampoort bridge in Ghent.
In the castle grounds at Grimbergen the work was put on a plinth. Walkers can view it from any angle. The sculpture will stay there for 5 years and signals the start of the Here Comes the Summer project, which will continue for several years. Each year, a new sculpture from the S.M.A.K. collection will be added in the run-up to a S.M.A.K. open-air exhibition in the Prinsenbos in 2021. In early September there are activities associated with the sculpture and the project.
Here Comes the Summer is part of Museumcultuur Strombeek/Ghent, a structural joint project by S.M.A.K. and the Strombeek Cultural Centre that has been running since 2013. One of its elements is that the cultural centre is able to make use of works from the S.M.A.K. collection for the exhibitions it organises.
