Jan Eric Visser
Untitled (2023)
Rotterdam-based sculptor Jan Eric Visser (1962) is known for carefully creating challenging abstract sculptures from his personal everyday inorganic household waste and experimenting with innovative recycling materials. Thus, he has been exploring ecologically driven aesthetics respectful of the earth’s resources and the cycle of nature and life. Since 1987, no plastic garbage has left his house other than in the form of an artwork, the plastic within defining its shape according to his principle of Form Follows Garbage. Aspiring for an artistic reconciliation between concept, matter and activism his oeuvre challenges contemporary understanding of matter and existence.
Mining his own garbage bag and exploring the use of circular materials, he connects waste to climate change: “Waste and climate change are very much interrelated and both result from a fossil fuel-oriented society. As we move towards renewables, we also finally question our misuse of petroleum-based disposables like plastics. Moreover, a more circular economy will help to alleviate our climate issues. Mining for new raw materials and transporting them goes hand in hand with massive CO2 emissions, not to mention the production and distribution of new products.”
Most of the pieces presented at Petromelancholia have been finished with E102 Tartrazine and E110 Sunset Yellow, artificial food dyes that are petroleum-derived, rendering a deep hue of yellow. They accidentally found their way to Visser’s garbage bag. The works have been impregnated with votive candle residue, also an oil byproduct, implicitly referencing the myth of the Fall of Icarus and rising temperatures.
The alluring presence of Visser's works in terms of surface, colour, scale and shape is inextricably related to the ethics of their production. Consequently, he does not employ or add any glues, pigments or chemicals other than those found in the garbage, exploring the inherent properties of the waste materials and thereby the new domain of circularity. By his practice, the question of value is raised on a fundamental level: As much as the artistically elaborated outlines and surfaces of his sculptures, their fillings, their function as a storage for potentially scarce materials in a post-fossil, post-affluent future society are what might define their future value. Thus, the works harbour valuable resources for future generations, according to Visser.
Mining his own garbage bag and exploring the use of circular materials, he connects waste to climate change: “Waste and climate change are very much interrelated and both result from a fossil fuel-oriented society. As we move towards renewables, we also finally question our misuse of petroleum-based disposables like plastics. Moreover, a more circular economy will help to alleviate our climate issues. Mining for new raw materials and transporting them goes hand in hand with massive CO2 emissions, not to mention the production and distribution of new products.”
Most of the pieces presented at Petromelancholia have been finished with E102 Tartrazine and E110 Sunset Yellow, artificial food dyes that are petroleum-derived, rendering a deep hue of yellow. They accidentally found their way to Visser’s garbage bag. The works have been impregnated with votive candle residue, also an oil byproduct, implicitly referencing the myth of the Fall of Icarus and rising temperatures.
The alluring presence of Visser's works in terms of surface, colour, scale and shape is inextricably related to the ethics of their production. Consequently, he does not employ or add any glues, pigments or chemicals other than those found in the garbage, exploring the inherent properties of the waste materials and thereby the new domain of circularity. By his practice, the question of value is raised on a fundamental level: As much as the artistically elaborated outlines and surfaces of his sculptures, their fillings, their function as a storage for potentially scarce materials in a post-fossil, post-affluent future society are what might define their future value. Thus, the works harbour valuable resources for future generations, according to Visser.