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Folkert De Jong – The Immortals 


Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
April 12th-May 12th
4 stars
A gaudily attired couple sit astride some scaffolding watching the 
debris-ridden legacy the best minds of their generation inspired. Or at 
least that’s the sense you get of Dutch artist Folkert De Jong’s 
site-specific sculptural intervention, which looks to the gallery’s 
namesake and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret 
MacDonald Mackintosh, for inspiration.

Looking for all the world like paint-spattered dayglo-punk charity-shop 
dandies, it’s as if the pair are occupying some building-site royal box 
while a cheap seat variety show plays out below. The effect is 
heightened by the figure of a woman sporting a hat which from a 
distance looks straight out of Cabaret holding on tight to two male 
figures, while beside the scaffolding a male figure holds on to a 
battered approximation of a wooden acoustic guitar. 

A solitary female figure stands astride a trestle table in the midst of some carefully 
choreographed dance of death. Positioned in the midst of more regularly 
classical statues, this is theatre as still life, captured for 
posterity and ready for their close-up. 

The List magazine, April 2012

ends



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