For the public programme of Paris+ par Art Basel 2023 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present Jacqueline de Jong‘s work ’Baked Potatoes’ from 2006.
A group of ceramic ‘potatoes’ will be hanging from three pergolas, which are placed in the Vivier Nord fountain in the Tuileries. The work acts as a reminder that the gardens were once used to harvest vegetables for the Louvre palace. Now there is only a small vegetable garden left. For Jacqueline de Jong the potatoe is very enigmatic. It reproduces underground and yet it also has flowers and seed and can sprout in all directions. It may no longer be unanimously considered as an essential staple food by the 21st century urban population. On the contrary, many of us follow a carbohydrate-free diet and have banned bread and pasta as well as potatoes. Yet, more than ever, potatoes are a symbol of everydayness, of simplicity and of basic needs.
In the summer of 1960 Jacqueline de Jong visited Albissola in Italy for the first time. She went to Alba to work with Pinot Gallizio (he had just been excluded from the Situationist International and Jacqueline had been asked by Guy Debord to form the Dutch section of the Situationist International). After working for a week, she took a bus at 4 in the morning to Albissola to meet Asger Jorn, who she was in a relationship with for over 10 years. On several occasions after this meeting Asger Jorn took her to Albissola. On one of those occasions, around 1964, Asger Jorn, the mayor of Albissola and Jacqueline signed the documents to donate the garden and houses after Jorn’s death, but only if they would become an art centre /museum and public garden.
In 2006 Jacqueline de Jong was invited to make a work at Asger Jorn’s house in Albissola Marina in Italy. She decided to make a “Potato-Installation” to modify the fence around the pond, making it into a sort of “ceramic vegetable garden fence”. Thereto she made a collection of ceramic potatoes. She found out that real potatoes, which were like shrunken potatoes with “potato hair”, as she calls their long sprouts, cannot be used in ceramic, and so she had to invent remakes and called them ‘Baked Potatoes’.
When shown at the Tuileries it will be the first time since 2006 that the ‘potatoes’ will be ‘en plein air’ again. Next to the three pergolas there will be a rubber boat floating in the fountain filled with real potatoes.
