Cyprien Gaillard excavates Nazi bunker for Dunepark in The Hague

Cyprien Gaillard's first retrospective in the Netherlands, 'Beton Belvedere' at Stroom Den Haag, ran alongside the site-specific work Dunepark (2009) as part of the 'nu monument' programme. For Dunepark, Gaillard excavated a former Nazi communications bunker built in early 1943 as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall, buried under sand after WWII. The bunker, located one kilometre inland overlooking Duindorp and the North Sea, was opened to the public, drawing hundreds who climbed the gun deck. Gaillard's gesture recalls Gordon Matta-Clark's concept of a 'nonument', transforming the site into a space for unscripted performance and community engagement. The exhibition included works from the past four years focusing on Modernist ruins and post-War architecture, such as the video Desniansky Raion (2007) showing gangs in St. Petersburg and a collapsing Parisian housing block, and the series Belief in the Age of Disbelief (2005) inserting tower blocks into 17th-century Dutch landscapes. The bunker was reburied after three weeks. Gaillard's practice frames entropy as a creative cycle, proposing reuse over remembrance of condemned structures.