Containing space

2018 - 2019


A series of sculptures has been built up around a simple object: the round shaped container, may it be a cup, a bowl or a flowerpot. For many years I have been making these containers on the turning wheel and I have slowly realized that they are very powerful things regarding the conception and the experience of space.

               


       


                      

         

Based on these simple objects I am making constructions that always start with a concept: an idea drawn into three-dimensional space.

However, in corporeality things act different than preconcieved ideas; I adjust and react to the particular characteristics of the materials I work with.

During the building up of each work, I am searching for the fine balance of concept and matter to cancel the (illusory) boundaries between the two.

       

Within the process

             

     

 

Sub/liminal soundscapes

2019

Walls, borders, boundaries, demarcation lines are inherent to our daily lives, perception and thinking process.

The work focuses on the dynamics of liminal surfaces and the space within and around - inside and outside - to discover how boundaries effect the area they surround.

By the reproduction and altering of a simple plastic flowerpot I gain tools to examine the connection of substance, architectural space and their human perception.

The objects have a casted ceramic base onto which different materials are applied and previously recorded sounds are vibrated directly back into them.

This process results in a layered soundscape as each sound is changed by the material composition it goes through.

Installation photographs Gerrit Rietveld Academie 3-7 July 2019

Sub/liminal soundscapes II

2020



This work is the reassessment of the installation Sub/liminal soundscapes. Using sound waves with the specific frequencies of each object, the material shakes its own ‘voice.’

The audience is invited to touch the containers to feel their vibration and to influence the sound composition.

It is currently being developed within a residency programme of Steim Amsterdam.

 

I started my residency at AADK with researching the material qualities of the dried-out remnants of the barbary fig, a local cactus plant, that thanks to its fibre structure, is able to retain considerable amount of water, thus thrive on limited water sources. Some years ago, many of them around here dried out due to a plague.
                                       
There are numerous abandoned houses in and around Blanca (ES). When stumbling upon them, I had to think of the dryness I experienced there. As a place is being left, human presence is withdrawn from its interior and exterior spaces, memories drying out slowly. Life continues somewhere else and the decay of the houses gives place for new beginnings.

Working with the dried fibres of the fig and combining it with locally found clay, I have been using water as a main catalyst of reaching different stages of transformation while balancing between stability and flexibility.

 

“…this is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. “ 
George Perec




In my BA thesis I use the topic of private space in order to discover how physical space effects our perception, and the other way round, how our conception of space constructs corporeal space.

Starting from language and investigating through the concepts of inside, outside, private and public, looking at architecture, subjectivity and virtual space, I focus on visual access and limitation, boundaries, content and in-between zones.

                            

You can read the text here.