About the concept of the work of art 

The image of Daphne pursued by Apollo while she changes into a tree in order to escape the desire of this god is well-known in Greek mythology. The image of Daphne, who transforms into a tree, is her salvation from a destiny which she does not want to experience. In this way she escapes from the greed of Apollo, who embodies a material sigh with this immense urge to possess. Daphne is the opposite of that. Through her innocence she becomes untouchable as it were.

In March 2005 CC Ter Vesten asked Stefaan van Biesen to make an artistic account of the cutting down of three hundred year old majestic beeches at the Hof Ter Saksen in Beveren.

For many it was a shock to hear that these beautiful old trees, the pride of this special park, had to be cut down due to disease. One fifth of all oak trees and beeches in Flanders are diseased.

Reconstruction of the past

During the preparations and periods of new personal projects in connection with the relationship between art and landscape, a number of performances from Stefaan van Biesen which were partly photographed and filmed, spontaneously came into being. One of them was to go and stand on the foot of a cut down tree. Thinking about taking up the space of a disappeared tree with your own body gives you a peculiar feeling. Putting one-self in the place of what once was a silent giant and trying to imagine how this tree once looked like. Standing on its roots, which once sent all its sap to the highest branches and the uncountable leaves, gives one the sensation of standing in an imaginary streaming space. It becomes a stream of thoughts.

Transforming one-self in one’s mind and identifying with a disappeared tree is a peculiar experience. The intuitive reconstruction of what once was a living organism, was the reason to let the mental sensations, which these acts call up, evolve into a spatial image. The title of my sculptural proposal is ‘her-steller’ (‘re-storer’). The person in question puts himself back on the spot of what has disappeared.

A longing for restoration 

With this sculpture ‘her-steller’ Stefaan van Biesen wants to make a connection between man and his natural environment. The theme of a human being becoming a tree, points to a craving for restoration. Man gets back into contact with the earth and identifies himself with it. It is a concrete involvement where man finds his place back in a larger entity: nature which he is an essential part of. The figure is standing on one of the cut down trunks and brings the tree back to life in his thoughts. The figure ‘re-stores’ the tree and takes up his original place.