Running Shape #04 / In Search of the Perfect Square
Jeroen Jongeleen
(2014)
Jongeleen, who is fascinated by the patterns made by the gases that trail behind aeroplanes, keeps a watchful eye on the skies. He photographs the stripes, triangles and asymmetric figures as if they were "the stories of gods. His work is a veiled reference to the theory of Robert Bauval, a Belgian scientist who established a link between the three giant pyramids of Cheops and the middle three stars of the Orion constellation. It seems that the Egyptians wanted to reproduce the heavens here on earth.
The work Running Shape #04 / In search of a perfect square is the first in a series of works in which running plays an important role. In this work, Jongeleen has reproduced “the stories of the gods” in the landscape, by running his own square-shaped Line of Desire path. The Running Shape is reminiscent of Marinus Boezem’s famous work, Signing the sky above the port of Amsterdam, in which Boezem appropriated the heavens by getting a lightweight aeroplane to sign his name. The tracks that Jongeleen leaves behind in the landscape bear a relationship with Boezem’s famous land-art work, The Green Cathedral. This work translates Boezem’s longing to escape that which is terrestrial by means of a group of poplar trees that mimic the size and shape of the Notre-Dam in Reims: the symbol of the Heavenly Kingdom on earth.