Tom Claassen
Untitled
Galerie Fons Welters - Back Space
20 Oct – 24 Nov 2001
LEARN MORE
Galerie Fons Welters proudly presents a solo exhibition with new works by the Dutch artist Tom Claassen. Both larger and smaller pieces are on view from October 20th until November 24th.
Tom Claassen in his most recent work, manages to create rubber ducks, rats and other figures, bronze owls and clay cars which never look misplaced nor seem uncomfortable in their peculiar skin. Taking into account conventional sculptural techniques such as casting and molding and also such fundamental aesthetic principles as hanging, lying, standing or sitting, Claassen works with a traditional profile to attain an unorthodox product. His sculptures thus achieve a naturalness and a familiarity which draw on of our collective unconsciousness and at the same time manage to disturb and intrigue through their tweaked nature.
A thick black rubber rat, gutted, hangs from one of the metal beams in the gallery, nose down, front side open, strangely recalling the artists' thinly cast toilet interiors similarly exhibited in 1992. Larger than life rigid wooden figures are suspended intermittently in the space, like a giant's game of hang-man they dangle their monumental form yet remain surprisingly approachable. A form sits slumped against the wall, half man-half sac, parts of the figure lie around it, independent of it. In a sense this form has been treacherously dislocated, its limbs segregated, but funnily he - and this is when the 'it' becomes a 'he' - "he" induces not aversion but instead, compassion. And this is exactly where Claassen's works derive their power: they have the ability to hover between an audacious makeup and an amicable disposition. They loiter rather than are exhibited, and seem both very satisfied and fairly disillusioned by their own state of affairs. It is this balanced state of being which seduces and catches the viewer unaware.
[Maxine Kopsa]