Folkert de Jong

Paris

dukan hourdequin gallery currently presents The Immortals – a project by Folkert de Jong that the Dutch artist initially made for the Mackintosh Museum/The Glasgow School of Art as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (20 April – 7 May 2012).

Folkert de Jong’s groups are irritating: their face-pulling is joyful but it’s also repulsive, and you can’t tell if this is infantile bad behaviour or someone pushing the rules for statue-making to the extreme limit. You can, however, immediately spot who they’re by, given the use of the artist’s favourite material, Styrofoam (and its variant, polyurethane foam), whose frankly industrial look, gaudy colours and strictly chemical makeup situate the work firmly in the domain of the artificial. Used for insulation and for building Hollywood sets, extruded polystyrene possesses contradictory virtues: while easy to sculpt, it is only apparently fragile, with a rot-resistant composition that makes it more durable than wood. A lot of today’s bronze sculptures are cast from initial polystyrene shapes, but de Jong has always avoided this additional, official-art step towards sanctification.

Folker de Jong

galerie dukan hourdequin

September 1st – October 13th, 2012
24 rue Pastourelle
75003 Paris
France

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