Serge Onnen

Serge Onnen’s ceaselessly drawing hand leads to piles of cartoon-like drawings that can grow into complete books and animation films. Parts of the human body usually play the leading part: hands, arms and intestines, obsessively on the hop with objects, fanatically rummaging about for them or foolishly entwining themselves around them. Onnen mockingly lets them go round in an endless circle while they brandish a fork, hit with a bottle or wave banknotes. He laughingly turns consumerism and avarice into an eternally squabbling married couple.

Onnen has hung two round tables in the trees in Sonsbeek Park, turned so that the tops are facing each other. They are gaming tables, judging by the red and black numbers from the game of roulette that are applied to them. But at the same time they are circular saw blades, with large metal teeth. The artist’s description of them as ‘rotating, aggressive money-tools’ nicely covers their meaning. In the park the wind is the croupier, whose inconstant mood lets the roulette wheels turn harder or softer, and sometimes keeps them ominously still. This work, entitled Good Table / Bad Table, is saying that all our good money, our entire wealth, all our facilities even, can turn against us in the twinkling of an eye - exactly as saw blades of this enormous format could quickly fell the entire park.

The Guild of Rotary Arnhem rolled a version of Good Table / Bad Table through the city for the Procession.