texts
Herbert M. Hurka (publisher), Freiburg i. Br.: Text Catalogue ‚Interference, Jan Douma‘
Sculpture, space, and the flair of the material
It would not be unreasonable to interpret the slender and somewhat irregularly hewn body of the towering sculpture as the figure of two bodies in the act of being lifted up. But while its title ‚Hoch hinaus‘ [Aiming High] might just seem to echo what we are actually seeing, in reality its meaning goes much further, and it is by no means exhausted in merely duplicating the object in language terms. When someone is ‘aiming high’, it is all about ambition and success. The same metaphorical teasing applies to ‚Leaning‘ (2018), a sculpture fashioned from a roughly hewn granite stele, which in turn supports a strut of scorched oak twice its height. And just as the title literally reflects the sculpture’s form, the paired arrangement of the two elements easily evokes an anthropomorphic projection that allows us to forget the materials „per se“ and to overwrite them, as if the work actually ‘meant’ two figures leaning against each other.
Also leaning, but as if in the wake of chaos following a collision in unstable equilibrium, the sculpture ‚Collision‘ formed from a block of marble and diabase takes us into a more expansive field of associations than ‚Leaning‘ does. And although the shape is intended and the stones consequently are left „askew“, they evidently depict a (literal) „inclination“. In this instance, too, the title references far more than just the mutual relationship of these two objects. One can imagine two opinions – if not world views – colliding, illustrated through the contrast between marble and diabase, the black and white reflex of the most rudimentary scheme of perception. Yet with its contrast of the noble yet soft marble on the one hand and the unspectacular yet hard basalt rock diabase on the other, ‚Collision‘ describes not least the delineation of the sculpture itself. What is left in suspension, literally, is whether black was half drawing in or whether white was half sinking in – to quote (very loosely) a well-known verse from Goethe’s „The Fisher“. The titles of the almost closed forms featured in ‚Intimate‘ and ‚United‘ and the precarious equilibrium states of ‚Take Off‘, ‚Verlass‘, ‚Weightless‘ and ‚Balance‘ can certainly be considered along similar lines; ‚In Between‘, however, draws our attention to the „void“ between three soaring cherry-wood poles, just as it does with ‚Hollow‘, the empty space enclosed by a curvature.
Jan Douma sees himself first and foremost as a sculptor. His physical as well as intuitive relationship with the sculptural is due to a profound awareness and unerring sense of body and space, of how art objects influence one another, of how they not only behave within a spatial context but how they alter it, too, by shaping their surroundings. As far as these conditions are concerned, Douma operates within a classical script, i.e. within a tradition handed down from antiquity, in that his conception of space is derived from the corporeal. Sculptures objectify themselves as constructs of mass and statics – but that is not all. In the case of the megalithic sculptures, the entity of which comprises a fusion of several components, the medium expands to include the „negative space“, a paradigm characteristic of modernism, as the Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM) demonstrated in a comprehensive show in 2019. At this vast sprawling exhibition, hundreds of exhibits addressed the theme of modern sculpture in its relationships to diverse spatial constellations, from open spaces to enclosed spaces, hollow spaces, spaces in-between, all the way to virtual spaces. Douma’s works are situated in precisely this context – and by no means in exceptional instances only. As the case of the titular ‚In Between‘ elaborates, empty spaces and intermediate spaces, distances and intervals rank equally with the material conditions of mass, stasis and gravitation. The corporeal materiality defines the voids, much in the same way that they contribute to modelling the material forms in a reciprocal bond.
The merging of two initially radically different constituents, namely the plinth and what is serves to stage, could be seen as contradictory vis-à-vis the voids. ‚Black on Black‘ – and, similarly, the pigmented ‚Take Off‘ – inject an art-immanent note into the formal structure. And while the erstwhile difference between the traditional substructure and the figure remains visible as a join, both works deconstruct, re-assess and upgrade the plinth to an autonomous element of the sculpture. In ‚Black on Black‘ for example, the black diabase plinth repurposed in this way fuses with an elongated ashlar of scorched cherry wood to form a unified body.
Depending on the choice and nature of the relevant components, a reductionist system in the form of a basic grammatical structure offers a wellspring of possible combinations. The compositional limitation to, for the most part, just two or three elements yields a tremendous freedom in the choice of materials. Under the pre-determined dichotomies of „natural:artificial“ and „organic:inorganic“, we have combinations of wood with stone, wood with wood, stone with stone, and occasionally even iron or concrete. These patterns in turn differentiate themselves further according to the processing methods, specifically into hewn stone, chiselled wood, shaped iron and cast concrete, with characteristic structures that express themselves in the haptic properties of the surfaces and reveal the aesthetics intrinsic to the materials.
The use of scorched wood illustrates just how imaginatively Douma varies his material pairings. He uses a propane burner not just to blacken the raw material he intends to use, but also occasionally to set it alight and then extinguish it. Besides the arrangement of the forms themselves, this special material treatment emphasises the surface textures, as is the case with natural materials, as well as the colours, the interplay of which is all the more important as an additional artistic input. With a keen sense of purpose, Douma brings out the colours of the materials: the speckled grey of the granite, the restrained brown tone of the oak, and the warm reddish tinge of the cherry wood. By the same token, the minimalist conception has the effect of reciprocally intensifying the colour tones, which often consist merely of two tones in correlation to each other. This effect is enhanced further whenever the decision tends towards „achromatic“ colours, towards black and white, also known as „non-colours“. Whenever the interaction of dark diabase with light marble occurs as an extreme contrast, a new register opens up with the scorched wood; indeed, besides the velvety surface, the pigment too creates an additional charm. ‚Clan‘ (2020) impresses as a successful example of atmospheric flair. A key characteristic of the charring is the fact that neither the texture of the material nor its colour predominates; also, that the pigment is not applied to a colour substrate, but is „manufactured“. As the product of the transformation of a natural substance and a chemical conversion it becomes an authentic substance with a microstructure that is innovative for Douma’s oeuvre. With ‚Equal‘, ‚United‘, ‚Intimate‘, ‚Leaning‘, ‚Clan‘ and ‚Black on Black‘, it is first and foremost the more recent works (2019–2021) that one might group together as a „Black Series“, albeit with various antecedents.
What sculpture cannot achieve, painting certainly does. The colour stripes running in vertical parallels are the formal principle of a discrete group of paintings. As the continuation of his sculptures into a second medium, Douma’s oil and acrylic paintings are also subject to a reductionist order. However, the two-dimensional flatness which might make them appear less complex at first glance compared with the three-dimensional works does provide a platform for the almost limitless abundance of nuances in colour. ‚Afterglow‘ (Nachglühen, 2021) could be regarded as a reference picture. The colour temperature of the almost strictly geometric sequence of crimson, brown and black stripes is interrupted by a bright, pinkish band which, with its irregular texture, stands out prominently from the evenly painted stripes, dividing the picture into two zones with its light effect. There is also the suggestion of a shift to an illusionistic space, as if a curtain were opening in the foreground. With its title ‚Afterglow‘ and its exclusively warm colours, the painting takes on a meaning that refers to a reality beyond, so that, although abstract and geometric in structure, it should not be attributed to the Concrete Art genre, appearances notwithstanding. The picture surface of ‚Interference‘ (2021) is more succinctly divided by the contrast between warm and cold colours while in ‚Night and Day‘ (2021) cold and warm colours are aggressively offset against one another. That such polarities are set out conceptually is explicitly expressed in the title ‚Black vs. White‘ (2019), a composition in which the stripes break out from their geometric order.
As Jan Douma himself says, he likes to express himself ‘in parallel’ in both artistic media, i.e. with certain interrelationships becoming apparent already in the production process. A mottled shade of grey combined with black in acrylic paint is later repeated in a sculpture made of granite and scorched oak; or, indeed, vice versa, with the pleasant reddish tinge of the cherry wood re-emerging in the warm tones of an oil painting. In this reciprocal relationship, painting could be classified as a „derivative“ of sculpture, rather like mathematics, a translation from 3D to 2D, just as the opposite holds true, with painting inspiring sculpture. ‘Meandering’ is the term the artist uses to describe this back and forth between the two „métiers“. The fact that he opts for muted colours as a matter of principle rather than brash effects corresponds to the restrained material colours of the sculptures. Indeed, their intensity derives from an assured sense of nuance and a well-practised eye for what can and cannot be combined. The organic transitions, overlaps and interferences between the two areas are the indications that, whether painted or sculpted, this is a coherent artistic cosmos governed by a consistent logic.
Even if a decidedly reductionist approach opens up unimagined scope for combinations, variations, transformations and oppositions, a key factor persists nonetheless. And just as the elements deployed, the creative pieces, create bonds – whether in paired arrangements, grouped together as is the case with ‚Clan‘ or as commingling colours – they ‘energise’ themselves in an extended sense to become „protagonists“ that follow only the one intent characteristic of human beings as a whole, namely to build relationships, to interact, and to communicate.
As a sculptor I’m interested in the way a form ‚connects‘. How does it relate to another form or to the onlooker? In which way does the space in between take part in the dialogue? How do the mere silent structures on the surface and the specific characteristics of the material contribute to the expression? A piece usually gets its final shape in a rather slow process of alternating between intervention and standing back to let things happen.
The material used is mainly stone, wood or concrete and sometimes a combination of those. The specific material, the way it breaks, the particular structures and colours, the grain and texture, the smooth or rather rough surface, the scars and marks either caused by erosion or by hammer and chisel, angle grinder or chainsaw; they all add to the overall appearance.
My sculptures have a lot to do with space. Preferably placed directly on the ground, a piece relates in its own way to the surroundings. In essence, many of the pieces are forms in space, often reduced to a rather simple, casual and unspectecular shape.
At times, two or more elements are put together. The way they are interwoven, closely interlinked or rather placed opposite each other, defines the specific relationship between the different parts. The space in between the forms can be crucial to the character of the piece. In carving directly in stone or wood and developing gradually the final piece, finding a suitable counterpart might be essential for the whole process.
(Jan Douma)