De Cycloop

In the autumn of 2025, Museum Cobra will open the exhibition The Cyclops, a playful and energetic installation that invites visitors to literally and figuratively get moving. The exhibition is rooted in the spirit of the Cobra movement. For artists like Appel, Constant, and Van der Gaag, playfulness was no ornament but a necessity. They consciously deployed intuition and the physical as a counterweight to the rigidity of systems and the growing belief in reasonableness and control. This energy lives on in The Cyclops: an open gaze, in which play and working together make room for something unexpected.

The starting point is a simple, recognisable object: the marble. Seven artists are each developing an installation for the museum’s Water Hall that addresses movement, mechanics, or chain reaction with a marble in their own way. Together, the works form a spatial system.

One-eyed giant
The title refers to a figure from Greek mythology: a giant with one eye in the middle of his forehead. This Cyclops is often depicted as a powerful, instinctive figure who can be both creator and destroyer. His single eye represents a focused gaze, but also a limited view of the world – he sees everything, but only from one perspective. In the context of this exhibition, that eye takes on a new meaning: in the guise of a marble, it becomes a mobile sense, a mindful eye that moves through it all and makes connections along the way. Here, the Cyclops is not a monster, but a living system that learns by moving. The installations behave as one big body, one being, in which the individual parts work together as muscles, bones, and nerves. The eye – the marble – moves through these mechanics like a gaze hurtling through space. Thus, the marble track becomes a living being capable of action and reaction.

Learning through play
The exhibition is all about fun: about playing, touching, rolling and colliding. However, it is also about how to experience what material does: how form and gravity work together, how chance and control alternate. Visitors are also invited to set “the Cyclops” in motion and thus become part of the game. It is an exhibition that uses play as a way of learning, feeling, and thinking; in the spirit of Cobra.

Participating artists
For The Cyclops, seven artists are developing work that stems from their own practice. They are artists concerned with movement, technique, sensory perception, and material research. Rather than static, the work is physical, active, and direct: it is in motion and takes the visitor for a ride.

Vibeke Mascini uses copper wire to generate electricity to propel a metal marble. Zoro Feigl builds a marble track without beginning nor end. His marbles orbit each other like small planets, in a closed system that perpetually feeds itself. Theo Botschuijver plays with optical illusion: from a cupboard, a giant marble suddenly appears to be approaching you. Besides these three, Atelier Van Lieshout, Audrey Large, Philip Vermeulen and Leon de Bruijne also make their own interpretation of a marble track. The Cyclops is curated by guest curator Ellis Kat.