14 june 2024, Flor Linckens
In Memoriam: Jan van Munster (1939-2024)
With a heavy heart and sincere appreciation, we commemorate the life and work of Jan van Munster, who passed away on 28 May 2024. His life's work is marked by a profound interest in energy and a quest for balance between opposing and sometimes invisible forces — such as positive and negative poles, light and dark, warmth and cold, silence and noise. His creations are not only aesthetically pleasing but also serve as metaphors for the fundamental forces that define our existence.
Van Munster was born on 3 July 1939 in Gorinchem. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, followed by training at the Institute for Applied Arts Education in Amsterdam, which later evolved into the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.
Initially, the artist experimented with materials such as wood and bronze, but gradually he found his way to a more minimalist practice centered around light and energy. This is exemplified by his interest in force fields and magnetic forces, short circuits, radioactivity, and the energy of temperature and sound. He created, for instance, works in which he froze tubes or displayed batteries or magnets. In his long-running series "Brain Waves", he visualised the vibrating, abstract-looking lines of his EEG scan in neon. Van Munster underwent this scan, which records the brain's electrical activity, not out of medical necessity but out of pure curiosity. His brain was measured in various physical states (such as hyperventilation), and the pages full of results from these experiments remained an inspiration for his work for a long time. His so-called IK ("ME")-works also hold a prominent place in public spaces in both the Netherlands and Germany.
