Venster in het Landschap

The surprisingly designed statues of the animals are huge eye-catchers. There are eleven on the approximately six-kilometre-long stretch of road. Up to Boerdonk, but all on Laarbeek territory. The sculptures were placed there in 2002. A new road was built between Beek en Donk and Helmond, right across pastures. This was an intrusion into the Brabant landscape, so the province held a competition: 'Who will come up with a contemporary and original green design with integrated environmental art? Handle with Care art projects from Amsterdam won the competition with the transparent horses. The inventor is Alice Helenklaken. When Helenklaken first came to see where the new road would be, she saw farms, a monastery, villages and horses. According to the artist, the horse was a good symbol to build a bridge between the new road and the old landscape. All the horses were made of two-centimetre-thick steel plate. The anchoring of the steel construction in concrete plates was concealed in such a way that all the animals appear to be walking in the grass. A different horse each time. The new road cut through a meditation path from the monastery to the crucifix. So there had to be a foal there,' Helenklaken said.