'Pur Natuur'
March 10 - June 25th 2023
Sander Buijk's images refer to an autonomous world full of contradictions. The comic-like figures are tough and fragile, caricatured and vulnerable, emotional and closed. His use of material is equally unorthodox. He combines concrete with various materials such as bronze, neon, glass and more.
His visual language is close to the animated images in comics or the internet and has the same seductively simple formal language, but unexpected additions give the images a more complex identity. In their autonomous world, most images are closed and silent. Sander Buijk constructs, combines and labels the images in such a way that an ambiguity arises that moves and amazes.
He himself says that the reason for his work is the interaction between human relationships in the abstract, emotional or physical. The controversies that occur here fascinate him. Images that are powerful in their playful simplicity. By giving his figures a strong tactility, he wants to seduce, touch and involve the viewer, but he keeps his distance in terms of material and form.
In their basic forms, many sculptures consist of combinations of separate concrete parts. These constructed and composed elements are given a special twist by unexpected additions. Since the material plays a very important role in this, experimenting with material use is an important part of the design process. Here, too, he seeks out an ambivalence that should give the images an extra layer. What interests him in the creation of images is the search for a boundary. Image that on the one hand communicates well visually and on the other hand my individuality, which retains spontaneity and roughness. Images that are not too narrative, so that the viewer is stimulated to interpret. Contradictions that seem to belong together.