Lives in Kortrijk, Belgium
Website http://jonasvansteenkiste.wixsite.com/portfolio
How do you describe your own art practice?
I describe myself as an artist that works with and about spaces and architectural elements. I have a credo for making my work: form follows fiction. Where the idea or story dictates the form of my work. I’m an artist that does not believe in a medium, that all works have there own character and needs. Therefore, they can’t be expressed in the same medium.
I have a strong preference towards installations, because a viewer becomes more a participant of the work, it forms a different relationship (physical but also mentally). One of the motives that I’m fascinated with is the house/home and the uncanny relationship we have with this.
What was your first experience with art?
I think my very first experience of art was my mothers obsession with the paintings of Claude Monet. Whenever she had the occasion, she bought framed posters of his work.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
Almost all of my work starts from my own life and personal experiences, things that happen to me and leave an impression. Ideas or feelings that preoccupy me. Situations that I observe. Very day to day elements. And of course the idea of the home and the motive of the house.
I write or draw them down in my sketchbook, some of them grow to a fascination and then I try to analyse the essence of the project and try to translate it into a form that communicates this essence.
What do you need in order to create your work?
I know it is a cliche answer but I think time is the thing that I need most. I think I need to find the right form for the concept or feeling of the works. I need to understand them, analyse them to translate them towards a form.
And that’s a process that takes time.
At this stage of my practice I think that a residency to reflect on my work would be something that is welcome.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on several projects at this moment.
One of them is a project for the Emile van Doornmuseum and C-mine in Genk, Belgium, where I’m working on the relation of nature and 19e century landscape painters who lived there. I do so by using architectural elements of there villa’s in cottage style and introducing them back in nature as archeological finds.
I have a fascination for the idea of “Le pli” of Gilles Deleuze. I’m translating this notion to works where ceilings of rooms are folded until they become intimate and introvert sculptures.
An other work is a vanitas work where I want to explore the relationship between a home and his owners.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
I fell in love with the work “Bang!” Of Katja Aufleger.
I met Katja and her work in Coup de Ville 2017 where I showed my work Mr.House.
The analytic approach, the clear title “Bang! “and the poetry of the work attracted me. It’s a clever work. The exquisitely designed, hand-blown glass object, consists of multiple chambers. These are filled with substances that are clearly different from one another in color and texture. The interplay of colors, distortions, and reflections of light recall traditional Murano glass, and the beauty of the vessels reveals nothing about the danger of an imminent explosion.
