Puinhoop
preview/
2020
Puinhoop#pebble#adrift#drop#dent
Rooftop
session/
2020
Pebble#deepcircuit#slab#easternwind
Es regnet nicht auf dem Mond/
2016
Jordy Walker (1977) is a Rotterdam-based artist with a diverse practice; he is a visual artist, a musician and a theater maker. Often a system of interconnected narratives based on i.a. early memories, family history or cultural icons provides a framework for his visual art. He engages spaces and objects in ways that reveal underlying structures and patterns which he makes visible through the use of technique or material. By, for example, using repurposed materials that evoke associations, he opens the viewers' eyes to new, alternative stories. He conveys his thoughts through fusions of images or elements that carry significance for him, such as a childhood fascination with knights in shining amor or the human body fused with architecture. His works are open and encourage individual interpretations. At times, forms are found within abstract concepts or ideas; common to each selected space, object or idea is a potential for connection-making. Points of crossover between his different artistic practices can be seen, themes and characters, their attributes or what they symbolise, reappear and tie his work together even as the format and media change. Evel Knievel, for example, the famous daredevil and 1970s American icon, appears in different guises and forms in his visual art as well as his writing.
In his sculptural works he employs an economical and controlled use of line and material to define forms in almost architectural structures. Often his sculptures are site-specific, constructed as responses to the geometries of their environment or the architecture around them. With an interest in wearables - which links to the theatrical aspects of his practice - he creates smaller body-centric, mobile sculptures that initiate interaction and storytelling.
Walker explores the fluidity of ideas and images and how they weave together to create stories; a cut-out shape from a guitar amplifier re-emerges in a bow tie-like form as a new part of his visual vocabulary. He treats elements and narratives from previous and parallel works or experiments as components of an artistic palette that reappears in different contexts, as he investigates the multiple possibilities of his material.
Photography: Wendy Oakes, Sybille Neumeyer, Aad Hoogendoorn, Sander Schuurman
Text: Lise Sinnbeck