For the past three years, you have made sculptures out of porcelain, a material that is difficult to work with.
That’s true. I enjoy its sharpness; it allows for very refined details. Of course, it is quite fragile.
This fragility is seen throughout your work. Detritus and broken objects are everywhere; why is that?
I want the material to speak. How it drips, breaks, tears, flakes off or warps – as if it wants to be broken. I use the risk of collapse to create tension. For instance, in the case of the flat sculpture, I wanted the balconies to appear pristinely over a background of decay, the window frames, doorposts and walls.
How do you make your sculptures?
I usually start out with a slab of clay that functions as a blank slate. On it, I build as if making a collage of notable things in my everyday life. I play around with the process of making the sculptures. In the sculpture Deurpost/Galg (Doorpost/Gallow) in particular, things that had dropped or remained by accident while working became reference points.Preparation turns into a process that appears automatic. I have copied wooden laths and glue clamps from the process in porcelain; the work shows that it has been made.
How do your large and small sculptures relate to one another?
The smaller works tell stories. It’s like watching a scene through binoculars. In the smaller works, my fantasy and memories are engaged in isolated conversation with the porcelain. In the larger works, the porcelain is concerned with the outside world. Things surrounding me, outside of myself, such as a doorpost, a garden chair and the big-bags, I have recreated in porcelain. Closer by, more physical, like an obstacle, the porcelain shares its vulnerability not with my memories but with the viewer.
Concerning the Big-bags, can you tell me something about the physical aspects of your large works?
When I make a sculpture, the material is still soft. The places not able to withstand the heat of the oven are shown by their tears and warps, which is where I install supporting props. Like pointers, they indicate the weak spots of the sculpture.
Concerning the work Bril Boot (Spectacle Boat), what can you tell about your fantasy world in your small works?
While making it, I intended a standoff. I wanted both objects to feel each other’s presence. That is the only reason for their existence: the belief in contact. The sculpture should interact with archetypal ideas about existence. This is not about visualisation, but about revision.
How does your porcelain world relate to this world?
The daydreams I had as a child playing in a sandpit are the precursors to the sculptures. Looking at the work with the small tent, I wondered how I would survive on that tiny piece of porcelain. For the lifesize works, I wondered how the work itself would survive. The work allows me to relive things differently every time.
