From Ordinary Object to Sculpture

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I have used old wardrobes, chairs, sofas and tables but also construction materials like plywood for the making of sculptures and installations. More recently, I’ve been collecting elements of old furniture like glass, marble tabletops and mirrors, which I use for making tracing drawings. In addition to this, I’m always busy collecting diverse (fragments of) ordinary objects, from lightbulbs and buckets to wine bottle holders and coffee tables.

These are cheap ordinary second-hand objects, that I choose for one or the other particular form or material quality. I reckon that these objects can reveal something specific about their form, spatiality or materiality depending on how I handle them. I don’t collect for the (possible) value of the objects, but out of an interest in their ordinary qualities. Acting on and with these objects is about exploring form and, by doing so, exploring things that have to do with the memory associated with the form. In the work Project Table, for example, a range of sculptural ideas are incorporated on a large trestle table. One of the interventions is an old chair, once belonging to my grandfather. The chair is placed under the table in a way that the back of the chair sticks tightly through a hole in the tabletop. In that position, the function of the chair is taken away and it is somehow preserved; in the stillness of its situation, the ‘value’ of the ordinary chair is raised; it is in this frozen position, like an antique object in a display cabinet, detached from the real world, that one can project associations onto it. It is essential that the act of sticking the chair through the table is executed with precision. The trestle table has a dominant and monumental spatial appearance; it defines place and offers the possibility to create a poetic reading of my sculptural ideas. The table establishes the conditions according to which I can act with the ordinary objects.