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Joost van den Toorn (Amsterdam, 1954) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and lives and works in Zaandam. For more than forty years, he has been creating bronze sculptures that immediately catch the eye: figurative, literal, and marked by a generous dose of exaggeration. This gives him a unique position within Dutch sculpture.
Van den Toorn is less concerned with innovation or experimentation and more with contrariness, humor, and individuality. He plays with opposites to break through the “literalness” of his work. The result is art with multiple layers — in both meaning and material. As he once put it himself:
“Even when things become larger than life, they must retain a human scale. You have to combine light and heavy elements to make both visible.”
His sculptures have something direct and disarming about them. Van den Toorn feels no need for grand theories or concepts; he simply uses whatever speaks to him, whether it comes from high or low culture. The result is sculptures that pay little heed to notions of “good taste” — sometimes confrontational, sometimes abrasive, but always with humor and humanity.
A major source of inspiration is the punk movement of the 1970s. That rebellious energy still resonates in his work. Free from the constraints of rules or art-historical expectations, he creates sculptures that seek to liberate sculpture itself. Comparisons to American artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy are fitting: they share the same delight in disrupting the art world and puncturing the myth of the artist. As Van den Toorn himself says:
“I’m somewhere between a plasterer and an artist.”
Van den Toorn is less concerned with innovation or experimentation and more with contrariness, humor, and individuality. He plays with opposites to break through the “literalness” of his work. The result is art with multiple layers — in both meaning and material. As he once put it himself:
“Even when things become larger than life, they must retain a human scale. You have to combine light and heavy elements to make both visible.”
His sculptures have something direct and disarming about them. Van den Toorn feels no need for grand theories or concepts; he simply uses whatever speaks to him, whether it comes from high or low culture. The result is sculptures that pay little heed to notions of “good taste” — sometimes confrontational, sometimes abrasive, but always with humor and humanity.
A major source of inspiration is the punk movement of the 1970s. That rebellious energy still resonates in his work. Free from the constraints of rules or art-historical expectations, he creates sculptures that seek to liberate sculpture itself. Comparisons to American artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy are fitting: they share the same delight in disrupting the art world and puncturing the myth of the artist. As Van den Toorn himself says:
“I’m somewhere between a plasterer and an artist.”
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Dans la collection du musée:
Kröller-Müller Museum
Groninger Museum
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Museum Voorlinden
Rijksmuseum Twenthe
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