Try or fly

In 1986, artist Arie Berkulin (1939) was commissioned to make a statue to grace the entrance of the current Koopmans Building. To have it funded, the University had access to the (now defunct) “temporary contribution scheme for the provincial promotion of the visual arts.”

Corten steel

The statue is made of Corten steel and supports a stainless steel cylinder with beveled ends. It was long thought that the statue was called Fly, a reference to the pointy ears of an owl, the symbol of wisdom. When he was asked about it in 2017, however, the artist confirmed that the statue is called Try and was conceived when he was pondering one of his paintbrushes swaying and slowly coming to a standstill on top of a herring tin that served him as a paint tray. What is needed for something round to come to a standstill on something straight? This idea was then materialized by taking a thick slab of Corten steel, 7.2 meters long and 1 meter wide, and upending its two extremities, not quite at a ninety degree angle but a little more, leaning slightly outward. These ends then support a stainless steel cylinder that appears to be controlling the outward-bound forces of the two extremities, whilst having come to a standstill itself. You might call the work a “balancing act.”

Bicycle stand

The work of art did not survive for long near the Koopmans entrance as it was immediately appropriated by students as a bicycle stand. Administrative wisdom prevailed and two years later the statue was relocated to a more sheltered spot near the Cobbenhagen building.