Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest who passed away in 1996. A recent biography reveals that in the early 1990s he was completely blown away by the acrobat troupe The Flying Rodleighs. After seeing a performance, he began training with them and even went on tour. In his notes, it becomes clear that he saw a form of spirituality in flying and catching the body on the trapeze. Body and soul were fully united in that movement. The moment the acrobat lets go of the trapeze and floats through the air: a fraction of a second full of trust in oneself, the space, and the person who catches you.

In Villa stands the sculpture Trust by Max Siedentopf. On a white pedestal, the classic object on which art is displayed, stands a human figure. Or rather, it almost stands. The figure leans backward, arms crossed, eyes closed. As if falling backward, but completely calm. He, too, referencing the title, trusts that he will not fall to pieces. The body and the closed eyes convey that he knows: I will land safely.

Trust

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) argued that trust allows us to act without complete information. We cannot control everything, so we must trust. In this way, Max’s sculpture can be seen as the personification of the word Trust. A human body could hardly get closer to that concept: not fearing the fall. The man does not need full information, does not need to look around, does not need to grasp anything — he dares to act without complete information.

Max’s sculpture falls off the pedestal. Where a pedestal is normally meant to highlight an artwork, literally putting it on a stand, here the artwork falls from it. In his work, Max often explores humor: he wants to create artworks that play with the absurd and the unexpected. He explains: “Humor is a fantastic Trojan horse — it can convey a deeper meaning without revealing itself immediately. If you can make people laugh first, they will listen longer. And maybe then they will start thinking.”[1]

Repetition

In the same room hangs another work by Max on the wall titled You Matter Don’t Give Up from 2023: a hanging board with words that gradually change as panels rotate. The board starts with You Matter, changes to Don’t Give Up, and ultimately forms the sentence: You Don’t Matter Give Up. Two completely different meanings emerge. At first, it seems the board encourages the viewer: you matter, don’t give up. But upon reading further, the message flips: you don’t matter, give up. A minimal change in text, with a radically different impact.

Then the text starts again. What is Max trying to say? Which text should we accept as true, part 1 or part 2?

We live in a time where every question is expected to have an answer, or at least people constantly seek definitive answers. Max swam at a high level for a long time, rising every morning at 4:15 for his first training. Thousands of hours spent in silence, staring at a black line at the bottom of a pool, always moving forward, but never reaching anywhere. “If you are underwater that long, you learn to live in your head. You learn that progress is invisible. That nothing miraculous will happen, yet you keep going. That form of discipline, the quiet, relentless consistency, shapes everything. It becomes the way you move through the world.” [2] That repetition without outcome resonates with the looping words on the board: the impossibility of pinning down one fixed meaning.

Looking again

Max applies the same strategy to the board as to his sculpture on the pedestal. With subtle interventions — a falling sculpture balanced on a white edge, or merging two sentences — he challenges us to see reality differently. The board also changes how we interpret the sculpture. Why does the man fall from the pedestal? Does he truly trust to be caught, or does Max want to convey something else with this combination of works? A feeling of resignation, of someone throwing in the towel?

Through the interplay of words and physical objects, Max’s work feels like a journey of discovery. Visitors move through the space in search of meaning. A definitive answer, however, will not be provided. For him, the world itself is strange enough and full of chaos. He simply reminds people of that incomprehensibility that they pretend isn’t there.

It can be said, looking at the sculpture, the letter board, and the titles of the works, that Max tells a story about the dynamic between trust and giving up. The familiar voices in the head that everyone experiences, in large or small ways, daily. Priest Henri Nouwen saw the trapeze act and the fall within it as a metaphor for a good life. Initially, he felt shame and frustration when a jump went wrong. Until he realized the acrobats always pick up the thread again. The flyer is usually caught by another, but not always. Then they land in the net, get up again, and continue.

[1] https://www.forward-festival.com/article/interview-max-siedentopf
[2] Idem