With my sculptures and installations, I try to appeal to universal and applicable values for everyone. Questions like 'What is life?', 'What is the nature of God?" and "What is justice?" serve as a catalyst with this. So I search for freedom within all forms of law and order, for a universal specifier, for the unspecified within everything defined. If I keep working with these contradictions, I end up with God; the One, the True and the Good.
What is the strength of a human? I wonder… He is being propelled by constantly clashing contradictions; matter-spirit, nature-culture, male-female, human-god.
There are the happy moments; a dream, a clear insight, a marvel within which the contradiction wants to reconcile and matter becomes a spiritual experience.
That is when I suddenly see the statue in front of me, there where the border between material and immaterial, earthly and heavenly is only relative. Those moments are a moment of reconciliation, an existence. Then I start to build it…
I let myself be intuitively influenced by the writings of religious leaders (St Augustine of Hippo, the Franciscan leader St. Bonaventure, especially his Triplici Via / The triple way; the purifying, the enlightening, and the accomplishing way) Medieval scholars (Thomas of Aquino) poets (Vondel), and philosophers (the founder of Humanism Francesco Petrarca). What touches me is that they found solutions in the faith vs reason challenge by 1) to have faith and then 2) try to understand. I find them very precious and a big inspiration. SENDING THE SPIRIT OF COMPASSION
de os kruipt uit de oever van de rivier
HEAVEN HOLDS A SENSE OF WONDER
Met het danstheater op de achtergrond
I use symbols. They are the carriers of a spiritual message. Sculpting to me is a given capacity. All matter is spiritual. I use symbols because they have the capacity to hold several meanings, and they adopt their special power from the fact that the literal meaning points to a second one which transcends the first. Symbols traces their origin to, i.a. the Greek verb “syn-ballein” which means to come together. In symbols the real and experienced reality come together. There is no strict distinction between them; by separating the mind from the senses and letting thought outdistance the traditional pattern, is probably the moment when the vail that hangs over the earth becomes thinner and the contradictions come together in a moment of reconciliation. But the most beautiful example of this is Christ, He symbolizes, to me, everything that we as humans can become. He is the driving force behind everything I do.
TREETABLE
This sculpture is wholly made from Aluminum
CUIRASS
An armour with a heart
EQUATOR OF OUR MIND
As a portion of the scales this is a detail of the mantle
SENDING THE SPIRIT OF COMPASSION
The ox crawls out of the bank of the river
HEAVEN HOLDS A SENSE OF WONDER
With the dance theatre in the background
