Will Beckers (NL, º1967)

Re-cover
installation, work in progress, 2011
Collection of the Verbeke Foundation

Re-Cover is an innovative and ambitious environmental growing project made with eight old timer willow trees, which were rescued and replanted at the Verbeke Foundation in January 2011.
The project will change and grow as the natural boundaries of the structure develop.
This project challenges the traditional relationships between ourselves and our environment, and confronts the trees with their own materials.
It shows us how biodiversity can work in a very unique way, in a single plant species, the Salix, by bringing together different art works, and merging them into one living, growing cradle to cradle installation.

Second Life
installation, work in progress, 2010
Collection of the Verbeke Foundation

In the context of Green Summer Will Beckers created Second Life, an installation of several hundred young willow trees that were pruned during the month of May 2010 near Kemzeke. In the water basins of the Verbeke Foundation the willows begin a new life: while they lose their leaves, they root again in the water. Second Life illustrates the natural recovery process as well as the potential and at the same time, the unpredictability of the phenomenon. Second Life is a multi-year project to manipulate the growth process of nature.