I would like to invite you to my exhibition at Groeten van Marc!

Open on Saturday 23 November from 16.00 to 18.00

and Sunday 24 November from 12.00 till 17.00.

In this exhibition I continue on the theme ‘Shining and New’ with previous and new works.

In the last few years, I started experimenting with different materials than I was using until then such as oxidized metal. It started when, while moving house, I came across a box of old toys called “Linkits.” It took me months to figure out the name, as this line of toys was only in production for 2 years (1984-86), a failed experiment by the British toy giant Matchbox.

 

What struck me was the durability. Almost 40-year-old plastic that barely seemed to feel the ravages of time, the colors still just as bright and ugly and the construction system that was totally unsuitable for children still worked perfectly. Downright fascinating. In my mind, I vividly envisioned the joy of the archaeologist who would unearth it from the rubble of our civilization 1,000 years from now.

 

Here began a process that is still ongoing today, taking in the colors, shapes and characteristics of old toys to turn them into sculpture and assemblage work. One of the starting points is a theme I have explored before: the end of civilization as we know it and what remains and passes into a new form. As we now find shards of ceramics and tools of bone, how special and valuable will the fragments of fleeting trends of today be received by civilizations after us?

 

The work is also about the desire to re-experience emotions as if they were new. Unsullied by accumulated knowledge about the nature of human beings and life in a world where productivity is put before everything else. As a child experiences the world, everything is special, new and intense. The unbridled wonder at finding a brightly colored beetle, the magical metallic color of my toy cars, the cartoons, comic books, candy and clothing of the 1980s in which I grew up. Now words like kitsch, retro and old-fashioned come to mind. But back then, everything was pure and magical.

 

One of my teachers once proclaimed in a lecture that many artists work more colorfully in times of war and pestilence. This is to compensate for all the woes that arise in a period of conflict and change. For the artist, living as an intuitive antenna with open eyes and mind, it acts as a counterbalance to the darkness that lurks within. Like the golden hour coloring the brick buildings under a thundercloud. Like a geode in a muddy, coarse stone. Hope and comfort, Shining and new.