Full of the sunny, laid-back atmosphere of the Caribbean, the work of David Bade (b. Curaçao, 1970) is whimsical, humorous and colourful. This spring, the GEM, museum of contemporary art presents a major retrospective of Bade’s work since 1993. Highlights of the past will be interspersed with recent works and new versions of sculptures that have been lost. Meanwhile, over at Gemak, in the centre of The Hague, a host of people will be working hard under David Bade’s direction to produce a new art work for the grounds of the Hofstede Praktijkschool. The project has been set up in cooperation with Stroom and is being executed by a wide variety of local groups.

In 1993, David Bade had scarcely completed his training at De Ateliers when he won the Prix de Rome. Group and one-man shows followed quickly, both in the Netherlands and in Belgium. The retrospective at the GEM will show how work produced during this early period of his career (for example, for the 1994 Couplet IV exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) later became part of other installations. This repetitive use of works (or parts of them) is a regular feature of Bade’s oeuvre, as previous art works and everyday objects he came across during their creation are integrated into new compositions. The results are grotesque, life-size sculptures in which all kinds of objects are joined together using a range of building materials.

Another major feature of Bade’s work is the organic way in which his sculptures emerge. Since the process of construction is part of the point, what happens to the finished work of art is sometimes less important. A case in point is the series of clay sculptures on classical expanded polystyrene plinths that Bade produced for his two-man show with Erik van Lieshout (Uw Kenmerk ) in 1997. With the exception of Pupu – an amorphous figure seated on a bucket in a pose reminiscent of Rodin’s ‘Thinker’ and, as it were, creating itself from its own excrement – virtually none of those works have survived. In a move that raises pointed questions about issues like durability, uniqueness and collaboration in the visual arts, students from the AKI Academy of Visual Arts in Enschede are now, however, reconstructing a number of them especially for the GEM retrospective.

David Bade’s work also has a strong social and political aspect. Ever since the late ’90s, he has been organising workshops for many different sections of society, during which the participants create extraordinary and amazing sculptures and environments in public places. He will be running this kind of project in Gemak from 20 March to 30 May 2010. The aim there will be to work with students from The Hague’s Hofstede Praktijkschool (a school specialising in low-level vocational training) to create a sculpture-cum-‘hang-out place’ for them. On four days a week, visitors to Gemak will be able to witness the process of creation and add new story lines to an animated film which will gradually grow and evolve in the course of the project. Visitors to the GEM will be able to follow the evolution of the film via an internet link.

The presentation at Gemak will also include information about the Instituto Buena Bista and Arte Swa foundation that David Bade set up in 2006, together with Tirzo Martha and Nancy Hoffmann, to help talented youngsters in Curaçao.