SELECTED WORKS BY Folkert De Jong
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Folkert De Jong
The Peckhamian Mimic: "First Commandment"
2007
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones
Log approx: 90 x 530 x 105 cm Figure: 158 x 40 x 105 cm |
 
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Folkert De Jong
Seht der Mensch; The Shooting Lesson (and details)
2007
7 figures "Les Saltimbanques", 5 tree trunks. Styrofoam, pigmented Polyurethane foam.
nstallation variable approx. 800 x 800 x 300 cm |
 
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones. Overall installation.
190 x 400 x 300 cm |
 
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance - The Player (detail)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance - J.P. Coen (detail)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance - Balthazar G (detail)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance - A.J. Renders (detail)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.
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Folkert De Jong
The Dance - Gulden (detail)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.
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Folkert De Jong
Asalto de la Diligencia (and details)
2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, coloured acrylic sheets
300 x 120 x 300 cm |
 
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ARTIST INFORMATION
ARTICLES
The Iceman Cometh: an icy journey by Folkert de Jong to the depths of the soul
By david stroband
The landscape unfolding before the eyes of the visitor to Bureau Amsterdam could easily be described as ghastly. On a cool-blue, wintry hill, a number of blue figures in a shattered condition seem to have been frozen into an ecstatic pose. Their attributes quickly reveal them to be soldiers. Their gruesome, dishevelled appearance and the madness emanating from their faces betrays a desperate and inglorious retreat. Their only goal now appears to be an igloo-like structure in which other equally chilling figures sit. This shelter does not look very inviting and the figures look as if they are returning home from a cold fairground. Folkert de Jong has given this Styro- and polyurethane foam scene the enigmatic title The Iceman Cometh. It is a title that evokes a plethora of associations, but which also unequivocally points to the horror genre.
In 1996, De Jong had a studio in the western docks of Amsterdam. A desolate environment with cranes and warehouses - a perfect location for shady and unpalatable goings-on. He certainly did not feel at ease there, but he became fascinated by the lost shoes and porn magazines he came across near his studio. Then one day he found a bag containing a woman's clothes, letters and stilettos. He took it back to his studio and examined it. Like a true detective De Jong tried to deduce what had happen to the owner of these items. Through feeling and smelling the artefacts, De Jong began to feel more and more as if he had become involved in a crime. The tension this generated led him to make a reconstruction of her body. He draped her clothes around a wooden skeleton. The skeleton was covered in foam rubber taken from a mattress and tied up with tape. De Jong started to make more of these dolls until his studio became filled with all kinds of potential crime victims held together by foam rubber and tape. Video recordings he made of these figures and himself as he lay 'victim-like' in the back seat of a car clearly demonstrated that these dolls could lend themselves perfectly to a more narrative structure.
Once he began at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, De Jong started to make scenes using all kinds of materials; scenes that revealed worlds that appeal to our darker nature. In a range of installations he created moods which refer to the unheimlich, the uncanny or weird. This notion of the unheimlich dates from the second half of the eighteenth century, when it was used by philosophers like Edmund Burke to describe the dark side of the sublime. Sigmund Freud developed a psychoanalytic reading of the term in an essay from 1919. According to Freud, the unheimlich, the uncanny, is very close to the heimliche, or familiar: whenever feelings of safety and security are frustrated or crudely suppressed, the entrance to the more sinister and obscure compartments of the subconscious is never far away. It is precisely this close proximity of the orderly, sunny side of life to an existence full of dark urges and unprocessed events that is a constant source of fascination for De Jong and which forms an important point of departure in his work. Significant sources for him are stories in which often reserved characters suddenly manifest themselves as Frankenstein-like figures. For instance, De Jong read a book about a small community in the United States where a man, who called himself The Bishop, founded a semi-religious cult in which he sacrificed fellow villagers. This information all fed the first tableau De Jong made at the Rijksakademie. The sterility of the environment immediately demanded the creation of a personal domain. In his studio De Jong built a small, wooden house in which he, his brother and friends performed all kinds of shady rituals. The video recordings of these events were shown at one of the first public presentations of his work. The images of a girl lying with a bag on her head, a figure dressed like a toy doll and De Jong - the undisputed leader holding a pistol and wearing a jacket bearing the words 'The General' - appeal directly to everything we seem to associate with a very dark, base romanticism. Besides these images there was also the place, the small house, where the events took place. In the house were the discarded doll's costume and a bed in which a sawn hole seemed to embody the passage to the nether regions. On the wall hung flags bearing mysterious, private symbols and embroidered, secretive names like 'The Bisshop', 'Miller', 'Lacy'. On the front of the house was a clock, its hands turning at great speed. This strange world also acquired an extra, sublime dimension through the electronic organ in the house, which had its keys taped down. The penetrating base tones of the organ were fed through speakers, filling the space, as if appealing to unholy undertones in the viewer. De Jong managed to create a sinister, mystifying, semi-sacred ambience which reflected his experiences of Amsterdam's dockland and the world of his books.
Read the entire article here
Source: smba.nl
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