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Lot Essay
'We humans have to face the fact that we are part of a natural process, no matter who or where you are on planet earth. It is embedded in our system, but there is hope! Morality, intelligence and compassion can save us'
(F. de Jong, reproduced at https://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/folkert_dejong_articles.htm [accessed 4th June 2013]).
Folkert de Jong's Seht der Mensch: The Shooting Lesson is emotionally disconcerting and strangely alluring. Constructed entirely of Styrofoam and polyurethane, seven life-like figures of all ages are posed like a theatrical or Old Master tableau on top of a pile of lifesize felled tree trunks. At the centre a young boy is being taught to shoot a bow and arrow by aiming at a young child who looks forlornly away. The surrounding figures, all of whom are dressed in the style of harlequins, look on, some expressionless, some jeering, some mournful. The life-like crafted figures have each been coated in gestural applied paint and sporadically applied patches of a material that resembles reptilian scales. Dominated by tones of green animated with the occasional splash of violent bright colour, the figures in Seht der Mensch are surreal corruptions of the characters found within Picasso's Les Saltimbanques. Despite their animation and their jester's outfits, their interactions cast a desolate mood. Melancholy figures, they draw attention to dark comedy of life, and the rituals we perform to cope with the lingering presence of death. 'We humans have to face the fact that we are part of a natural process, no matter who or where you are on planet earth. It is embedded in our system, but there is hope! Morality, intelligence and compassion can save us' (F. de Jong, reproduced at https://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/folkert_dejong_articles.htm [accessed 4th June 2013]).
De Jong's work asks brooding existential questions with an incongruous playfulness, a contrast which is echoed in his choice of materials. He has for a long time sculpted his unsettling sculptures from the pastel coloured plastic foam used in Seht der Mensch, deliberately indulging the perversity of making such carefully crafted figures out of a material so lightweight and ephemeral. 'What matters to me,' de Jong has said 'are the actual moral conflicts that emerge from these materials... I carefully choose these materials for two contradicting reasons: for its immoral content and because of its tantalizing sweetness, human body-related colours, attractive texture and its very specific gravity and the possibilities they offer to use them in a sculptural way. These two elements provoke both attraction and repulsion in the same time and make it an efficient but disputable sculptural material. Once used in figurative sculptural scenes that represent a specific human drama, the meaning of the materials start to emerge above the technical possibilities and start to show its most politically incorrect side. That is my starting point and it becomes for me a unique artistic medium to reflect on the subjects of dark human drama and complex social and political realities in a most efficient way' F. de Jong, quoted in, A. Finel Honigman,'Folkert de Jong in Conversation', reproduced at https://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_jamescohan_com/ba121f01.pdf).
(F. de Jong, reproduced at https://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/folkert_dejong_articles.htm [accessed 4th June 2013]).
Folkert de Jong's Seht der Mensch: The Shooting Lesson is emotionally disconcerting and strangely alluring. Constructed entirely of Styrofoam and polyurethane, seven life-like figures of all ages are posed like a theatrical or Old Master tableau on top of a pile of lifesize felled tree trunks. At the centre a young boy is being taught to shoot a bow and arrow by aiming at a young child who looks forlornly away. The surrounding figures, all of whom are dressed in the style of harlequins, look on, some expressionless, some jeering, some mournful. The life-like crafted figures have each been coated in gestural applied paint and sporadically applied patches of a material that resembles reptilian scales. Dominated by tones of green animated with the occasional splash of violent bright colour, the figures in Seht der Mensch are surreal corruptions of the characters found within Picasso's Les Saltimbanques. Despite their animation and their jester's outfits, their interactions cast a desolate mood. Melancholy figures, they draw attention to dark comedy of life, and the rituals we perform to cope with the lingering presence of death. 'We humans have to face the fact that we are part of a natural process, no matter who or where you are on planet earth. It is embedded in our system, but there is hope! Morality, intelligence and compassion can save us' (F. de Jong, reproduced at https://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/folkert_dejong_articles.htm [accessed 4th June 2013]).
De Jong's work asks brooding existential questions with an incongruous playfulness, a contrast which is echoed in his choice of materials. He has for a long time sculpted his unsettling sculptures from the pastel coloured plastic foam used in Seht der Mensch, deliberately indulging the perversity of making such carefully crafted figures out of a material so lightweight and ephemeral. 'What matters to me,' de Jong has said 'are the actual moral conflicts that emerge from these materials... I carefully choose these materials for two contradicting reasons: for its immoral content and because of its tantalizing sweetness, human body-related colours, attractive texture and its very specific gravity and the possibilities they offer to use them in a sculptural way. These two elements provoke both attraction and repulsion in the same time and make it an efficient but disputable sculptural material. Once used in figurative sculptural scenes that represent a specific human drama, the meaning of the materials start to emerge above the technical possibilities and start to show its most politically incorrect side. That is my starting point and it becomes for me a unique artistic medium to reflect on the subjects of dark human drama and complex social and political realities in a most efficient way' F. de Jong, quoted in, A. Finel Honigman,'Folkert de Jong in Conversation', reproduced at https://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_jamescohan_com/ba121f01.pdf).