About
Jan Steenman’s artistic practice is a paradoxical symbiosis between performance art and sculpture, body and object, time and space. The body becomes something distinct from the “social self” and objectives itself as an art material. The object becomes alive and loses its stagnation in time. Jan Steenman’s work combines sculpture and performance art in a homogeneous medium, using the body as a tool and sculptural material to activate the work’s process and the final result. An alienation of the human body manifests itself when it is transformed into a sculptural object. An action that gives the body a vulnerability, a physical and mental commitment and a new way of experiencing reality. Indeed, by using techniques of integral moulding of the body with different materials such as plaster, clay, alginate, silicone or latex, a possibility is created to be inside these materials during and after the creative process. This requires a high resistance of the body to long-term static isolation. Steenman perceives this experience of petrification, the fact of remaining motionless in a sculpture for several hours, an empirical way of changing this relationship to time and of existing, through living sculpture, simply in the present.
This idea of living sculpture or living matter is also reflected in the aesthetics of his sculptures, which could be defined as organic; which is therefore relative to organs or organised living beings. Often referring to micro-anatomy, Jan Steenman uses cellular structures as a source of inspiration to create forms, textures and vectors for his sculptures. These offer a surreal possibility to experience with the naked eye a hypothetical interpretation of our internal structures, representing for example a DNA several meters long floating above the ground or a monumental bacterium growing towards the ceiling.
Exhibitions
September 2021, Art Amsterdam, Kunst Rai, Amsterdam
October 1-4 2020, Big Art n.5, Hembrug Zaandam
January 2020, Rattling Trickling Whispering, Het Hem Contemporary Art Center, Zaandam
November 2019, Artist Council Exhibition, Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert, California
October 2019 Human Concrete, Boggieland, Amsterdam
September 2019 AMOA Utopie, Ruimte voor Idealen, The Hague
November 2018 SBK Sprouts Young Talents, SBK Kunstuitleen & Galerie, Amsterdam
November 2018 Fake predictions of the magic 8-Ball, De Vlieg, Haarlem
July 2018 Graduation Festival at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague
February 2018 Artbnb Festival 070, The Hague
January 2018 New Year New Me, WORM, Rotterdam
December 2017 Nokia’s TagLine, MOOF, The Hague
May 2017 Turn Left on Supernova, De Besturing, The Hague
April 2017 Spring Festival, The Royal Conservatory, The Hague
December 2016 The Shark’s Pretty Teeth, NieuweVide, Haarlem
Mars 2016 (De)quantify me, TENT, Rotterdam
January 2016 Kirkuk exhibition, Kirkuk restaurant, The Hague
Decembre 2015 Otsefinam (Manifesto), TENT, Rotterdam
November 2015 Show More, Stroom, The hague
December 2014 Easy show, Exo Gallery, The hague
Bibliography
Damn Magazine n.72, The Endurance of Performance, Jan Steenman: The sensorial Art, Emma Lucek, avril 2019
Metropolis M, Graduation Show 2018: KABK Lorelinde Verhees, 12th July 2018
MISTER MOTLEY, Art & Everyday Life KABK Graduation, 21st July 2018
JEGENS & TEVENS, KABK Graduation Festival Connie van Driel, July 2018
JEGENS & TEVENS, ‘Nokia’s TagLine / The pre graduates of KABK’ Connie van Driel, 14th November 2017
JEGENS & TEVENS, ‘Toon Fibbe / The Shark’s Pretty Teeth’ Jegens, 29th December 2017
de Volkskrant, ‘Ik zie jou niet als seksueel, maar als one of the guys’ Jeanne Prisser, 15th April 2016
Education
September 2013- 2018, Graduated in Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
January 2013- June 2013, Orientation year in visual arts and design MK24, Amsterdam
2008-2012, Collège Calvin, Geneva