Wundertower #1 Private collection Nick Ervinck

First of all, I am fascinated by what my advanced digital techniques can contribute to the exploration of new, organic and experimental spaces. I like to conceive works of art within given spaces and contexts, but above all, spaces within other spaces, negative spaces, intrigue me, as I saw them grow with Hans Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. In itself, this theme fits well with my general desire to participate in the constant innovations of this society, but it also fits seamlessly with the sci-fi and computer games from my youth and my admiration for futurism that also always incorporated new techniques . Within the digital design process, I therefore strongly focused on the tension between box and blob. Gradually, however, I also detached the blob sculpture from this embedding and turned her into a strong energetic concept with which I could build a whole world. So I developed a kind of primary building block that could function in a different kind of sculptural alphabet, a basic ingredient with which I could rediscover the world and investigate the eternal problems of sculpture, such as inside out, tension-equilibrium, concave-convex, angular- round, male-female….

A typical work in this regard is IKRAUSIM (2009). I got inspiration for this rock sculpture from a walk in the Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai. I became fascinated by the pierced jagged rocks along the banks of the Huangpu River. These shapes immediately reminded me of the sculptures of Henry Moore (1898-1986). This resulted in the creation of a yellow organic structure that brought together different worlds, the Eastern and the Western, as well as the organic structure and the digital blob architecture. IKRAUSIM has become a three-dimensional print, loaded with a number of references from sculpture, painting and drawing. In an accompanying animation, a camera also guided the viewer into the rocky interior chambers of the sculpture. Many of my blob sculptures are thus characterized by a great innovative potential, by a freedom that flows outwards, cannot be foreseen or stopped anywhere. I always tried to make lines move in this and to make them feel as if in a kind of subcutaneous perception. These blobs made the spectator desire to be absorbed into their innermost being, accompanied as they were by a play of expanding holes. Eyes that set out around the blob had to be guided and seduced to discover a hundred possible forms of beauty.

Credits

Nick Ervinck GNI-RI jun 2021, Kunsthalle ERvincK, Sint Pieters Kapelle Middelkerke - B