Welkom op de vernissage van mijn nieuwste sculpturale installatie; "The shape of Things" op donderdag 2 september om 20 00u. in de Antichambre van M.Museum-Leuven
Met een inleiding door Didi De Paris en Denise Vandevoort, schepen van cultuur.
Ann Dieltjens
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An Introduction to the Work of Ann Dieltjens
"Stream of consiousness " 2009 A fusion of opposites Ann Dieltjens makes abstract sculptures in a clear and simple formal language. Their interpretations are manifold. The work tells us something about evolutionary growth, architecture and industrial design, but also about universal human attitudes and relationships, archetypes and artefacts. And of course, there are also associations with the artist’s personal memories and emotions. In the fusion of all these elements, the opposites are set against each other: black versus white, organic versus constructed, mathematical versus arbitrary, introverted versus extroverted. Between design and architecture The works of Ann Dieltjens explore the border region between sculpture, design and architecture. The vague likeness between some of her works and articles of daily use makes one think indeed of the world of design. And yet, her works also have an architectural character: they invite the viewer to penetrate them or move around them. Even the smaller works convey this invitation of a spatial dialogue, this longing for monumentality.
Manual versus industrial Ann Dieltjens builds her sculptures with lime (plaster) and iron, two substances that require a different approach. Lime, building material of nature, asks for an instinctive, intuitive approach, with the accent on kneading, moulding, sanding and polishing. Iron, the basic industrial material , demands a more systematic approach since it has to be measured, bent and welded. In combining the worlds of the industrial and the organic, the artist defies the technical potential of the material. This method of working does not only affect the form of her works, but also the meaning, the content. The emotional effect of the two materials on the viewer is quite different. The artist flirts with the logic of industrial processes by using her raw material as building material, and yet she emphasizes the element of craftmanship all along. For the construction of her white elements, she strengthens the plaster with wire netting. Even after extensive sanding, these elements keep something of their uneven surface, which underlines their handmade character. Also the iron, which is bought in bars of differents lengths, preserves an unfinished touch. Unlike most of her fellow sculptors, who emboss and manipulate the metal, Ann Dieltjens really wants to construct. She never melts the iron completely; she welds it and plies it before finishing it off with the grinding disc. Therefore, the individual parts remain clearly visible in the end result, emphasizing the attenuating role of manual work in the hard, mechanical whole. Creation of meaning In the current conception of artists and scientists as individuals who, each in their own way, explore the limits of the world’s transformability, the artist is usually seen as the impulsive scatterbrain and the scientist as the methodical perfectionist. As an ‘impulsive perfectionist’, Ann Dieltjens finds herself at the crossing of these two worlds. She accurately investigates how formal data can be transformed into meaning, a process at which those investigations often begin to lead their own lives, guiding her into ever more unexplored territory. The artist considers each three-dimensional object as a carrier of information, which in turn can be developed or transformed into new information. She developed this self-determined vision during her last year at the art academy (Sint-Lukas, Brussels) and it has characterized her work ever since. Her sculptures of today however, though not fundamentally different from works of that early period, clearly show more depth and scope, both in method and in the creation of meaning. The form of an idea Ann Dieltjens’ way of working reminds a little of improvisation in jazz music. Starting from the idea that each new variation (of any spatial form or item) may elicit a new spatial experience, the artist sets herself to explore certain themes in more depth. Her work is a continuous process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. In her sketch book, new ideas can constantly be seen to arise from old ones. They are adapted, clarified and completed until at a given moment they prove fit to be carried out. Virtual images The artist does not exclusively work out her ideas in three-dimensional forms, she also experiments with digital sculptures. The latter technique consists in drawing manually, and with the tools of Photoshop, three-dimensional amorphous shapes in a prephotographed space or construction. While drawing, the artist can very quickly and easily give expression to her ideas. Circumventing the restrictions attached to iron and plaster, she can also make sculptures impossible to realise in three-dimensional reality. It should be stressed that the virtual images are more than drafts or studies. They are to be seen as works of art in their own right, caught in an interesting interaction with the handmade sculptures. The digital mode is a source of inspiration for the three-dimensional one and vice versa. The next step for the artist will be to bring the (virtual) sculptures to life in little animations. In this way, she hopes to make her sculptures move subtly, to make them breathe and grow as it were.
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"Elastic Blues" 2008
"Red Dog Project; ' Bones' " 2009
CV Ann Dieltjens (1967) graduated as a laureat for sculpture at the Higher Institute Of Visual Arts Sint-Lukas in Brussels, Belgium. She lives and works in Leuven.
Working in the tradition of abstract sculpture, she acknowledges her debt to the work of well-known artists including Hepworth, Brancusi, Arp, Chilida, Bourgeois and Kapoor, yet she manages to open up her own perspective in this field. The basic assumption of her work is the creation of a symbiosis between nature and culture. Organically related elements such as bones, seeds, and fossils, which seem to be bleached in the sun, are fused with elements referring to architecture and furniture design. This combination yields sculptures that are both hard and tender, monumental and intimate. They sometimes remind of futuristic architecture, sometimes of neatly arranged prehistoric excavations or again of vegetational growths. Its secret lies in the innovative formal language, creating a multitude of meanings through its associative power. Expositions: 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2000
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