Folkert de Jong
Folkert de Jong - The Shooting...at Watou; 1st of July 2006
Galerie Fons Welters - Back Space
22 May – 29 Aug 2020
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With every Summer Special we have asked a young writer to do a Q&A with the artist and write a text. Here done by Melchior Jaspers.
The first time I saw Folkert de Jong's work was in 2007. The work 'We Deal You Lose 1' made a stunning impression and was exhibited with a number of other works by Folkert de Jong in a large space near the Muiderpoortstation in Amsterdam. I walked there every Monday afternoon as an art history freshman on my way to my nieces, because I looked after them for several hours each week. The work "We Deal You Lose 1" and "The Last Boogie Woogie" that were on display there had so much energy, expression and zest for life that they completely gripped me. The works also made nervous, how could such images exist?
Here in Galerie Fons Welters, the impressive work "The Shooting ... At Watou; 1st of July 2006 " is shown. At the time, the work was made specifically for the art and poetry festival in Watou, Belgium. A kneeling, colossal pink figure with a large blue helmet is surrounded by elegantly dressed soldiers who have their rifle or drum ready. The whole situation is somewhere between a fight, a sacrificial feast and a dance scene. The scene exhales that something has to be overcome and the whole is about to culminate in a macabre ending.
When de Jong made the statue for Watou in 2006, he referred with the title to the world famous painting "The Shooting" by Goya. The group of sculptures is an idiosyncratic display devised by de Jong of a scene from the Eighty Years' War.
Now the work can be seen here in the gallery, separate from the specific setting it was created for in Watou. As a result, there is a struggle that is less tied to a specific time and place. It is difficult to distinguish which figures are good and which are evil. All the figures presented seem to contain both good and evil without it being clear what the prevailing morality is. The figures have embraced a certain insanity and look psychotic out of their eyes or heavy under the influence. The heads and eyes burst from aggression and madness and on the other hand arouse pity, and because of the use of color, they have something more pleasant, unsavory and almost endearing. The struggle the figures have seems much more an internal and individual struggle than a struggle against an external opponent.
Folkert de Jong has been a master in the representation of historical figures and events for a number of decades and does this in an immediately recognizable manner. The use of industrial styrofoam, polyurethane foam, bronze and recently also clay, the choice of specific colors, the courage to create, the speed of making and taking rigorous decisions are characteristic of de Jong's works and oeuvre. The pleasure and energy during the creation of the works radiates from it and therefore the images do not feel convulsive at all. They feel very free. De Jong relies on a confident intuition, which makes the works leave an indelible impression.
[Melchior Jaspers]