Artist Statement

Through my sculptures, I try to capture life in its progression by candidly reflecting the landscape of humanity in transformation. Even though my sculptures are in effect static, they seem to move.  The unfinished aspect reinforces the feeling that the sculptures are still in construction and growing but might also be seen as starting to fall apart. This duality of interpretation is central to the way I relate my work to life’s visceral emotions, struggles and tensions, representing the battle between the conscious and the unconscious mind. In these uncertain times, as always, understanding one’s surroundings is crucial to making sense of our own feelings and where we think we stand in the world.

We currently live in one of the most interesting and challenging times of human history. There have, for example, never existed so many humans on Earth, which accelerates societal, technological and environmental change in dramatic ways. What we took for granted is questioned on a weekly basis, and anchoring traditions or beliefs are falling on the wayside or, on the contrary, are being followed with excessive zeal. Not only are political or religious views being radicalized but, as always in times of change, fear of the unknown is used to influence the behavior of estranged people.

Using the sculptural medium I create awkward, ‘unheimlich’, hybrid forms made to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Hereto I combine the essential parts of human or animal bodies, trees and minerals, and juxtapose them against cut-off limbs, geometric lines and surfaces and day-to-day objects. The movement and tension emerging from their encounter symbolizes human nature and societal/environmental interactions.

I sculpt directly in plaster, shaping live-sized works without preliminary vision of the finalized work and by using a quasi-instantly setting material. This way, I want to minimize the intervention of the conscious mind. Randomness and chance are an integral part of the work.  This is obtained by sculpting directly in hydrostone (plaster) and its characteristic 5-10 min setting time. You could call it 'action sculpting'  in reference to action painting, but the result is closer to the baroque movement of sculpture as the piece has multiple ideal viewing angles.  The sculptures remain, however, in an unfinished state to show a state of in-progress, unveiling the underlying rawness of the initial idea, i.e. a non finito. This technique allows the finalized works to keep the unhindered qualities of a sketch. More specifically, the sculptures start growing from the inside out in a dendroid fashion and are built as a sketch with the movement of the tendons embodying the lines, which are always fluid,never quite crystallized. My sculptures may, at first glimpse, derange and look unfinished, but they challenge the viewer and make him question not only what he sees directly in front of him but also how he sees the world that surrounds him..