In a show that inspires one to consider the artist as both inventor and investigator, we are at once confronted by what appears to be the skin, wings, and skeletal remains of an antediluvian creature. Animaris Sabulosa – a colossal sculpture turned into a conceptual fossil could be from another galaxy. At the other end of the gallery Animaris Rigide begins to take a walk. Deceptively organic in appearance, the artist’s ironic stance emerges as these forms are created from common manufactured materials of the industrialized world: bruised-ochre PVC electrical conduit, cable ties, and adhesive tape. Use of these basic elements further emphasizes the Creation myth. Jansen employs the computer as a synthetic, virtual laboratory; his indigenous North Sea arthropods are genetically engineered to thrive on the beach, walk on wet sand, and feed on the wind. The digital simulations serve to optimize the architecture of joints and legs each artificial creature needs to move in its intended environment. Each limb is composed of a geometrical arrangement of tubes, the lengths of which the computer selects from a finite range of 1,500 randomly determined segments. The joints are placed to articulate the closest approximation of the leg's ideal curve through space as the creature walks. The head both resembles and functions as a sail. Through the measured combination of control and whimsy, these endo/exo-skeletal constructions are animated by interventions such as air currents, while their locomotion is altered by encounters with dry sand or the surf. Species that are successful in their environment are able to pass on their leg designs to their progeny. Art historical precedents such as the flying machines of Leonardo da Vinci and the mechanical sculptures of Jean Tinguely serve as points of reference, if not Points of departure. However, postulating a synthetic evolutionary course in an intellectual climate where the concept of “cloning” has moved from the realm of fiction to that of reality, repositions the orbit of Jansen’s sculptural activity. ~ Marlena Novak | Flash Art
Bio Theo Jansen is a visual artist who studied science at the University of Delft, Holland. In his first seven years as an artist, he just made paintings. Then he started a project with a big flying saucer, which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and brought the people into the streets and put the police in commotion. For about 10 years he has been occupied with making a “new nature.” Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. Jansen makes skeletons that are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives. |