Caleidoscopia is the graduation work with which Lisette Huizenga began her practice in 2009 at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. It is an immersive installation and a three-dimensional digital painting, 12 by 7.5 by 2.8 metres: not a work on the wall, but a space you walk into.
She wanted to make something on a human scale, an experiment in calling up an experience. The year before, she had designed a wall for a hostel in Scheveningen and felt for herself what happens when a design becomes part of a room. For her final exam she wanted not one wall, but a whole space: every wall, and the floor.
The basis is a cube, unfolded into six planes. From that form she raised the walls. She left the ceiling open on purpose, so daylight could fall into the work. The plan suggests a church. For her this is not the sign of one faith, but a space open to everyone. The open ceiling belongs to that idea.
Once the form was set, she built a digital model in Cinema 4D and designed the structure. The installation is made of thirteen wall sections and six floor sections. She then made nineteen digital paintings that connect literally to one another. A door in one painting is the same door in the painting beside it. The floors also depict rooms, and continue into the floors of the wall paintings. One painting is a mirror: in it you see the whole installation in reverse.
The walls and floor are covered with digitally made and printed paintings. Furniture with printed designs runs on into the walls. The scene is a dune landscape woven through a house: living room, kitchen, bedroom, studio, study, staircase, garden, garage, a horse room, cellars. In the dining room stands a real table for two, against a wall on which a table with eleven more seats is painted. Together they seem one table. A window looks out onto that dining room. Elsewhere, real curtains hang before a view that is not there. Reality and illusion are one thing here.
People often walked in slowly and carefully, with a critical look. That look almost always changed into a quiet, serene smile. They arrived in wonder, and the wonder was glad. A therapist said: I want a wall like this in my practice, this makes you happy. From the reactions it was clear that the space had changed their experience.
Just before the final exam, Caleidoscopia was also shown as augmented reality, at the academy, at the CHI Netherlands Conference in Delft, and at ICT Delta in Utrecht. The physical installation followed: Fespa Digital Europe 2009, the KABK, the Woonbeurs at the RAI in 2010, Pulchri Studio in 2020, the ABN AMRO head office in Zwolle, and in 2014 the atrium of The Hague city hall. Imaba Xpressions in Zoetermeer made the realisation possible.
Commissions came at once, from people who wanted such a wall in their home. She was also asked to recreate the Sistine Chapel in the toilet of a modern house. That work received the Golden Toilet Brush Award from the Delfland Water Board. Galleries asked to exhibit the work. What Huizenga did for the first time at this scale in Caleidoscopia — an image that does not stop at the edge, but becomes the space itself — has remained the core of her digital painting, and of the Huizenga Collection.
The work is now in storage, to protect it, and because a large space is needed to set it up. Stored, including the aluminium frame, it measures 3 by 2 by 1.5 metres. For an exhibition the installation can be rebuilt.
Anyone who wishes to protect Caleidoscopia for the future can discuss a purchase under conditions, for a symbolic amount. During the artist’s lifetime the work must remain available for exhibition when a request comes. It must be protected for a hundred years, and be shown on request in relevant places. The original digital designs are available.