For sixteen years Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been working to create a sculptural species
that moves and even survives on its own. Picking up the wind in gossamer wings his
spindly-legged "Strandbeests" acquire uncanny animate movements as if it were blood not the
breeze running through their delicate forms and living tissue not plastic tubing and
lemonade bottles that made up their scuttling limbs. Coinciding with a travelling exhibition
this photographic tribute from Lena Herzog captures Jansen's menagerie on the beaches of
Holland where through a process of evolution they now trot against the sun sand and sea
even pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their
movement. Carefully composed in a meditative black and white Herzog's remarkable images
exhibit Jansen's passionate vision as much as they show the eerie intersection of animate and
inanimate in his creatures. The result is a mesmerizing encounter with a very Surrealist brand
of marvelous with an unfettered imagination and with whole new ideas of existence.
