I visited the solo exhibition of Henk Visch being held at WAKO WORKS OF ART, a gallery in Roppongi. Henk Visch is a Dutch sculptor who, I hear, is also acquainted with Yoshitomo Nara.
As the following shows, Henk Visch is a veteran and a grand master of an artist.
Henk Visch (born 1950 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands) takes deep, poem-like contemplation as the starting point of his practice, giving form through his work to the various modes of thought thus drawn out, and expressing the possibilities of perception as physical objects. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 1972 and, from around 1980, began exhibiting his work mainly in Europe. The 560 cm bridge that was his first publicly presented work is now part of the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, and since then his public sculptures have been installed across Europe, in Munich, Rotterdam, Antwerp and elsewhere. In 1988 he held a solo exhibition at the Dutch Pavilion of the 43rd Venice Biennale. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions up to the present day, including two participations in documenta (1992 and 2002). In 2012 a retrospective was held at a museum in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. In recent years his opportunities to show in Asia have also grown, including a display at the Moriyama House designed by Ryue Nishizawa (2006), the 2nd Beijing International Art Biennale (2005), the Singapore Biennale 2006, the Busan Biennale 2006 and the Busan Biennale 2014. Beyond his own practice, he has been involved in education since the mid-1980s, and in recent years has taught at the Münster Academy of Art and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
In any case, I was utterly overwhelmed by the works.
Sculpture
At WAKO WORKS OF ART we are pleased to present, from Friday 25 May to Saturday 14 July 2018, the 7th solo exhibition by Henk Visch, one of the leading sculptors of the Dutch art world, titled ‘At the edges of cultivated land.’ Born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands in 1950, Visch is an artist who continues to question ‘that which is invisible,’ centering his practice on sculptures whose distinctive forms evoke the human figure. Taking deep, poem-like contemplation as the starting point of his work, he gives shape through his art to the various modes of thought drawn from it, expressing the possibilities of perception as physical objects.
At the heart of this exhibition are 13 new sculptures made in 2018. The artist himself, who is visiting Japan, gives each of them a place and composes the exhibition space. Around the sculptures are arranged some 20 poetic drawings—another facet of Visch’s work—and the mutual interference between the independent objects and the space they bring into being, along with the complex layering of their relationships, is conjured as if by magic.
In these new sculptures a fresh approach to form is attempted. As before, they are based on cast-bronze figures, yet combined with translucent acrylic and glass, accessories, plain fragments of wood and models, so that the coexistence of disparate things is delicately staged. A characteristic of Visch’s view of art is its attention to the boundary between existence and non-existence—the making process in which he shapes his objects by touch in order to know them precisely, and the expression of the sensation of that contact itself. The images depicted in his drawings, too, are drawn from senses other than sight—things the artist says are ‘of the kind I could draw even with my eyes closed.’ By making bonds and contacts visible, tools for understanding the world and liberating consciousness are made ready.This is his first exhibition in Japan in six years, since the three-person show with Ayşe Erkmen and others that Visch curated in 2012. The artist book of drawings due to be released at the same time, ‘HENK VISCH drawings: Hope everithing is good with you,’ also includes an exchange of letters with the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, with whom he is close.
Wow, amazing. It really feels as though our common sense is being put to the test.
Drawings
My right brain got a thorough jolt of stimulation.
As luck would have it, I was able to meet Mr. and Mrs. Visch in person. They were a bright, easygoing couple who didn’t put on artist airs at all.
The works, mind you, were priced at sums that could buy an imported car—not exactly cute….
