Folkert
de Young, Operation Harmony, 2008. Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane
foam, pearls, 340 X 700 X 230 cm. Copyright the artist. Courtesy James
Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai.
NEW YORK, NY.-James Cohan Gallery
New York welcomes the return of Dutch sculptor Folkert de Jong for the
artist’s third solo exhibition Operation Harmony opened on April 1st and
running through May 7th, 2011. Following his solo exhibition last year
at the Groninger Museum, his inclusion in the Sydney Biennial 2010 and
in anticipation of the sculpture exhibition The Shape of Things to Come
at the Saatchi Gallery opening in May, for which his work is the cover
image, Folkert de Jong’s career has been firmly launched on the
international stage. De Jong employs the contemporary industrial
materials Styrofoam and polyurethane foam, well understood for their
inherent contradictory properties of cheapness and indestructibility, to
create sculptural tableaux of what can be considered anti-monuments
that conflate the past and the present.
There are two central works in the exhibition. The first is the
monumental scale installation, Operation Harmony, 2008, measuring 23
feet long, which will be seen for the first time in the United States.
This work is inspired by both Jan de Baen’s painting "The mutilated
corpses of the de Witt brothers, hanging on the Vijverberg in the Hague”
from 1672, which depicts the gruesome scene of the strung up bodies of
two brothers executed for their political beliefs, and the "harmonious”
grid structure found in Piet Mondrian’s modernist paintings. The title
of the work Operation Harmony is borrowed from the optimistically named
Canadian forces that were deployed in Bosnia in 1992 to help keep the
peace. The artist has an unsettling ability to combine such period
perfect details as lace neck ruffs from Vermeer’s Golden Age paintings,
together with the dense blackness of the oozing "blood” and "charred”
bodies that are spliced onto the sickly pink foam scaffold and the
delicacy of the hand-carved teeth and eyes of the decapitated heads. De
Jong, as the writer Lilly Wei aptly describes, "zooms in on the
double-edged and cultivates contradictions. Combining the comedic and
the grotesque, he leads viewers, with charming stealth, to contemplate
the horrors that are so frequently his subject.”
The other central piece The Balance II, 2010 is second version of a
work that de Jong created for the Sydney Biennial 2010. The tableau
depicts Dutch traders swindling the Native Americans out of the island
of Manhattan for beads and whiskey. The grinning traders are doing a
jaunty dance as they balance on the artist's signature industrial oil
barrels and wooden pallets as they show off their wares. Writer Michaël
Amy succinctly explains, "Long-established traditions are toppled by
this irreverent young Dutchman, the works of cherished masters are
hopelessly disgraced, and revered subjects are corrupted through and
through. De Jong’s the tactless jester, part moralist, part sadistic
clown, who holds a mirror up to our eyes.”
Recent solo exhibitions include the artist’s survey Circle of Trust
Selected Works 2001-2009, Groninger Museum, Belgium (2010); and The
Shooting, Wandsworth Antheneum, Hartford, CT (2009); Mount Maslow,
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY (2007); Gott
Mit Uns, Kunsthalle Winterhur, Switzerland (2006); and Medusa’s First
Move: The Council, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2005). Major
international group exhibitions include the upcoming Cryptic: The Use of
Allegory in Contemporary Art with a Master Class from Goya, CAM, St.
Louis (2011); and the Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, The
Saatchi Gallery, London (May 2011). Recent exhibitions include the 17th
Bienniale of Sydney (2010); Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art,
SMAK, Gent (2009); Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our
Time, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT (2008); Destroy Athens, Athens
Biennial (2007); and Fractured Figure, Works from the Dakis Joannou
Collection, Deste Foundation, Athens (2007). Folkert de Jong lives and
works in Amsterdam.