Over the course of a full year, Lander worked on this sculpture in different stages, outdoors, through all the seasons. Rain, wind, frost, and sun became part of the work. The form did not emerge from a predetermined design, but was gradually guided by the grain of the marble and by an inner sensing that slowly took on an abstract language of form.
Throughout the process, Lander felt the presence of the sea. As if Lander were not only working in stone, but at the boundary between water and shore, between ebb and flow. The salty scent seemed to linger constantly in the wind and guided him through the marble.
At first, he intended to preserve the rough skin of the stone on one side. Yet the sculpting process forced him to let go of that intention. Step by step, the crust disappeared, as if it too had to give way for the final form to become visible.
Strikingly, visitors during the work’s development consistently recognized different sea creatures. Some saw a fish, others a shell, a ray, an octopus, a whale bone, a sea serpent, or an unknown deep-sea being. No reading was ever the same.
With 'Tussentij', he did not aim to depict an animal, but a presence: a form that is simultaneously being and landscape. As if it belongs to the world between land and sea, where water arrives and withdraws again, where ebb and flow continuously alternate. As if it remained behind when the water receded. 2025