Wessel Verrijt (born 1992, Lierop, NL) makes sculptures, architectural vehicles brought to life during performances like characters, or, as he prefers to describe them, like “hybrid entities”. Verrijt’s work originates in found materials. He reassembles collected pieces of wood, fabric, metal and cardboard into new shapes that still carry traces of their background and history. These traces are one factor in why he picks them, but he also considers their colour, shape and skin.
Verrijt: “During my EKWC residency, I’ll be looking for the contrast between the fleeting found materials I typically use, and the hardiness of ceramics, which can last an eternity. This contrast between the momentary and the everlasting, between the fluid and the calcified, between the light and the heavy – that’s a key foundation underpinning my work for the h3h biennial.
I collect the materials I typically use from my surroundings. I consider these objects and materials to be living entities, which influence each other and interact with people. A constantly moving stream of objects and materials being collected and appropriated, moving through a process, changing, forming brief constructions, getting passed on, reused, or discarded.
Everything in my work is fluid and always in motion. Can ceramics become part of an oeuvre that’s continuously moving and transitioning? Can ceramics be fluid? At my EKWC residency, I’m keen to develop my found materials with ceramics, and to incorporate these sculptural elements into my work for the h3h biennial.”
Photography: Kira Fröse.
