B[L]OOM (2024)

Koen Kaptijn

in cooperation with Naald en Hamer

B[L]OOM is a sound art installation and an instrument, made of brass bells.

The chalices emit a soft, but insisting song of longing and melancholy; a molten sound world full of echoes and visions.

It is a tribute to Reindert de Leeuw and a bow to everything that is convincingly flexible. Or like G.K. Chesterton wrote long ago:

“In everything that yields gracefully, there must be resistance. Bows are beautiful when they bend only because they seek to remain rigid.
Rigidity that slightly yields, like Justice swayed by Pity, is all the beauty of the world. Everything seeks to grow straight, and happily, nothing succeeds in so growing.
Try to grow straight and life will bend you.”