Evenhuis Gertjan

The sculptures of the sculptor Gertjan Evenhuis, born in 1955, always bring the viewer back to the fundamental questions of life. While the sculptural style and colossal size of his figures make them seem powerful and mighty, their nakedness and jagged surfaces also make them appear vulnerable and penetrable. Gertjan Evenhuis is exhibiting at this year's Triennial with the work 'Malheureux comme les pierres'[1]. Standing on the unstable surface of a broken gravestone, the male figure, crushed by his misfortune and immeasurable despair, appears to fall backwards into nothingness. Only the transparent, steel architecture that holds the sculpture seems to give it ultimate support.

Incorporated into the stone plinth is a labyrinth - a delicately crafted structure and a powerful metaphor for the hopelessness that life sometimes confronts us with. With "Malheureux comme les Pierres", Gertjan Evenhuis shows us the emotional and physical limits of naked existence in a grandiose sculptural accomplishment and in a formulation that is as radical as it is poetic.

 Quote

«An uncomfortable sculpture made of uncomfortable material. Basalt is an unyielding type of rock that always acts as a kind of antagonist.»

[1]  The common French expression "Malheureux comme les pierres" can only be loosely translated in English as "Miserable as sin".