ALARM - Museum of All Times, Beugen (NB)
The art of Jeroen Huisman (1964) has its origins in the need to continually find a relationship with the apparent capriciousness of and in nature. He has a weakness for the manifestations and solutions that emerge from that nature; the chaos, the tissues, the vastness, the intangible, the breakdown and necessity, the small, tenuous and the delicate, the ineradicable, the persistence and chance.
Around 2012, I started making installations and (light) sculptures. I combine assembly techniques with the application of thermoplastic materials, such as PLA, a polylactic acid bioplastic derived from the world of 3D printing. I developed a very personal palette of techniques through which thermoplastics are treated and applied. I see the often amorphous forms that are created as a human-made pseudonature; an assumption on which things in nature might be constructed. I model these materials with a glue gun or a 3D pen.
With such a 3D pen I build, line upon line, drop upon drop, semi-transparent sculptures with a glassy texture, which I call Plastoids, reminiscent of fungi or deep-sea creatures, and in which, like growth rings, the factor of time is readable. In the creation of these sculptures, I allow uncertain parameters that co-determine the development of forms, such as chance and the embrace of error. I call these acts of unpredictability.
My installations usually consist of assemblages of recycled materials and interrogate forms of nature experience, as in The Snail Language Translator Device (2024), in which communication with snails is proposed. At Birding Apparatus (2015), a project on alternative paleontology, I try to reconstruct sounds that dinosaurs might once have made through highly delayed bird sounds.
Work period and exhibition at ALARM - Museum of All Tden, Beugen (NB)
With the project title Acts of unpredictability no. 3 in 2024, I worked, lived and exhibited for two months in the Brabant village of Beugen, near the Meuse River. Two exhibitions in the same year with the same title preceded this: in Einbeck in central Germany and in
Arnhem. Both exhibitions consisted of a collection of semi-transparent 3D pen sculptures of different sizes.
On the Oeffeltseweg in Beugen, since 2011, the Museum of All Time, brainchild of artist Ans Verdijk. Together with her husband Clemens de Vroome, the project's patron, she converted an agri-food container into an exhibition space, inspired by the old maria chapels of the region. The structure stands out, so right on the street. With viewing box-like windows all around, it looks like a landed spacecraft. It can be viewed 24/7 and is lit from the inside until 11:30 p.m. ET. Behind it is ALARM, a square former stable room of about 10×10 meters, converted into a multipurpose art space since 1994.
Sometime in the spring of 2024, I received a message from Ans about a possible exhibition in her museum. She liked my sculptures, which regularly passed by on Facebook, and she offered me an exhibition in "perhaps the smallest museum in the Netherlands. That caught my imagination and an on-site introduction was quickly organized. Every two months an artist can exhibit there, but upon viewing this place I immediately felt a need to not only exhibit there. I wanted to live and work there. On a mirror-smooth smoothed concrete floor in the middle of the space stood a dyke of a square work table. In my head I projected unfinished work and tools in a kind of laboratory setup onto that table and while wandering through the space with my eyes I suddenly saw a computer corner with scanner and printer, a folding bed, and a camping gas outdoor kitchen. Ans didn't look up from my idea and was immediately excited. ''When do you start?''
There was light, electricity, a refrigerator and a pellet stove. Staying in ALARM would be a kind of luxury camping, with use of toilet and shower in the flanking house. I would come to work there from mid-September 2024 until the end of October, with a possible extension to mid-November. Although I saw the work period primarily as a kind of retreat, the public would be able to follow my work on five open studio days in October, with a finissage on Nov. 9.
In the third week of September, my place of work and living began to take shape. The principle less is more does not apply to me. I am an artist who collects objects, which after some "maturation" are given a function in an installation or sculpture. I have been recycling in this way since the 1980s. That knife cuts several ways. For example, I never bought a new TV. But people who sometimes helped me move know the downside as well... So with my Toyota 'mini-truck' I transported a lot of working materials, tools and work to Beugen.
The principle less is more does not apply to me
The Museum of All Time, despite its limited space, has many opportunities to exhibit art. I placed five sculptures in the various alcoves. The sunlight played fantastically through the glassy material, making them light up like ice, the reason also why I call them lit sculptures. At night with the LED lighting from inside, it looked stunning. Shown here were: Gurgite (2024), Testudine 1 - Petaso version (2024), Testudine 2 (2024), Leoninus Plastoid (2020) and Pullulant (2018).
Several new works were created during this working period. The quietness in ALARM was ideal for concentration. During the open studio days, visitors were very interested in the creation of the Plastoids. So I often showed how this is done. The work is usually created rotating, like on a potter's wheel in ceramics. While turning, usually on a metal stand with a rotating head, which I Vertical Builder have come to call and seems to have been a tool for stringing tennis rackets, I draw line upon line of sculpture into height with a 3D pen, while turning the whole thing with my free hand. Millimeter by millimeter, such a shape grows. In places where my hand does not follow the previous line perfectly, a bulge arises, which becomes accentuated with subsequent lines and becomes a serious modification on the basic shape. What I am doing is consciously subordinating myself to a number of variables in the making process. Thanks to mistakes I make, erratic lobes are created in the material. In this way, I imagine, forms also arise in nature, in reproductive and growth processes, as well as in all kinds of geological situations.
Many visitors were surprised at the structures that emerged and some compared my technique to lace-making, as it has a similar concentration to crafts. An idea was born, working in ALARM, and in conversation with visitors, to translate my sculptures into thin translucent porcelain. I am curious to see if molds of the sculptures can be made in which to experiment with casting clay. So I will have to look for a place where I could try that out.
What I am doing is consciously subordinating myself to a number of variables in the making process
To a few installations I had brought back from Arnhem, I wanted to make some changes or improvements and document them. The Photon Counter (2016), a parody of the phenomenon of measuring is knowing, needed to be repaired. The aforementioned installation Birding Apparatus, which consists of a table topped with a thermoplastic horn containing a little speaker, a 16-rpm record player, an audio amplifier, volume knob, interference suppression filter, two white gloves and a holder for twenty singles with bird sounds, I converted it with a digital octave reducer, a pitch shifter, that makes dinosaurs even more audible. Visitors were amazed that nightingales and even robins could sound so fearsome and found it plausible that dinosaurs really could have sounded that way. Children stood listening with open mouths.
Many people came to watch during this work period, artists, as well as local residents. The finissage on Nov. 9 was well attended with as many as 25 works on display. I enjoyed the place and its surroundings, the many walks in the nearby bird nature reserve the Felt and the crazy island beyond the marina in the middle of the Maas, where one afternoon I counted no less than 18 storks. This was a very pleasant experience with the inspired support of Ans Verdijk and Clemens de Vroome.
English 
Dutch