Tom Volkaert’s sculptural work is a testimony to the materiality of memory as much as it is an ongoing tribute to the spiritual and shamanic force of art.
Born in Antwerp in 1989, Volkaert’s sculptural work is a carefully balanced combination of refined artistic craftsmanship and the strategic use of unpredictability that comes into play when working with enameled ceramics, epoxy, or oxidized metal. Many of his works consist of circles on legs, which the artist likes to call steering-wheels. These works are like totems: symbolic and organic artifacts that make present the otherworldly alien life in the cosmos and that put us in touch with something radically different from us. On the edges and inside these circles, contorted arachnoid limbs, intestines, and sickly satanic tongues are carefully arranged and held in suspended animation. It is as if these circles are portals to another cosmic dimension and something wholly other than human life is trying to get through, a lumpy otherworldly and alienated organic gesturing at us in a way that feels both familiar and estranging.
Functionality entered Volkaert's work early on. It began with clocks, whose reference to impermanence places them close to his sculptures. Through collaborations with designers such as Serban Ionescu, Volkaert started designing chairs. Due to the loss of a close friend and out of interest in various addiction problems in our society, he recently explored medicine cabinets as contemporary vanitas symbols. For Art Rotterdam 2025, the artist will build a complete living, in which utilitarian objects and works of art merge. A total concept in which the separate parts together draw you into his extraordinary world.
