Accretio

In 2004, the then Queen's Commissioner Mrs Maij-Weggen unveiled the work of art on the Bavaria roundabout. The official name 'Accretio', which means 'merging and blending into each other', is hardly ever used by the inhabitants of Laarbeek. Many see a beer bottle cap or crown cap in it.

Artist Ron van de Ven says about this: "For all sorts of reasons I found it necessary to interrupt the rigid form of the bent beam, so that the whole thing would become more playful. It was only when the dents in the form had found their rightful place that I saw the resemblance to a crown cap. So this actually came about spontaneously. The fact that it is convenient because one of the clients was the Bavaria brewery is a coincidence.

Apart from Bavaria, the clients were the municipality of Laarbeek and the province of Noord-Brabant. Ron van de Ven came into the picture as an artist because he was a member of a group of Brabant artists. In this group, several people were involved in advising municipalities on the purchase of art. From the large group of artists, four were selected, who were allowed to submit a sketch design. From these, the choice was made. Ron has already created many works of art, which have found a place in Brabant. "But I'm only 62, I can still make many", laughs Ron.

Dynamic
"The work of art is on a roundabout, so in the morning you look at a different side of the work of art than in the evening, when you drive back. I think it's important that the image is different than on the way out. Actually, my goal is that the sculpture becomes a different experience every time you look at it from different sides. The location of the sculpture determines its shape. Ron says: "The Bavaria head office rises like a monolith from the water and forms a closed entity. If I then place a closed form on that roundabout, I will always lose out to the Bavaria complex in terms of size. So I have to make a concession; my shape will be open. But it must also do justice to the other client, the municipality and the province. In my design, therefore, I started out from a square pole, representing the four municipalities that have merged. This vertical trunk then develops and goes its own way in a dynamic grand gesture, perhaps almost too big for its own trunk." The already discussed dents in the form provide a certain rhythm to the shape. The rapid growth of the four municipalities together is somewhat slowed down by the dents, which can also be seen as problems that arise when the municipalities merge.

Bamboo
Originally it was planned to plant bamboo of about 1.5 metres height on the hill of the roundabout. It would be a reference to barley, one of the raw materials for beer. However, Ron managed to stop this by showing two designs to the committee that decided on them. One with the tall bamboo around it and one with grass as planting. The latter design was also the best design for the committee and that's why the work of art now stands on a grassy hill. "Otherwise I would have had to make it higher, so that it would have ended up above the bamboo, and that has a lot of disadvantages from a constructional and visual point of view," Ron explains. The figure '4' seen by some when approaching the sculpture from Aarle-Rixtel, was not yet noticed by Ron and was not meant to be, but a coincidence.