Jonas Wijtenburg
Jonas Wijtenburg graduated in 2011 from the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht. Immediately afterwards he received the Ron Mandos Youngblood Award. During recent years he has exhibited not only in the Netherlands, but also in Germany and Nepal.
Jonas Wijtenburg makes ‘piled sculptures’, which appear to be wobbly piles of (parts of) objects and tools. The installations, which resemble overgrown totem-poles, have an air of charming clumsiness. The materials Wijtenburg uses are the remains of previous installations or unfermented ideas. As a result, each of his creations has a history of its own.
Wijtenburg often creates site-specific work, i.e., specially created for the location in which it is displayed. As a result, the enormous creations automatically enter into relationships: they seem to burst into the location, or they are actually compressed by it. Wijtenburg makes his sculptures primarily based upon functionality, though he gradually lets go of this criterion during the work process. As a result of the continual re-distribution of parts, they finally enter into an intuitive – rather than practical – relationship with one another.