Page 91 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

“Bones and Stones No. 2,” 2001 and “Ed’s Dance,” 2002 make the All are implicitly organic, and some even seem plant like. The
point clearly. In the former sculpture, the two verticals can be read upright sections of “Chai” and “Menhir Virgine”, both 2001, resemble
as legs, the outstretched sections as arms (one reaches to the sky), completely open to the sun.
and the squarish elements, there are three, each smaller than the Even the rather heavy inert “Menhir #9 Tetramorphe”, 2001 bursts
other by a clear gradient, as the upper, middle, and lower portions of into complex lyric life at its highest point, as though to deny the force
the torso. In the latter work, the figure stands on one sturdy leg, its of gravity. This same climactic surge of intricate efflorescence occurs
torso flung to one side, its limbs cascading to the other. It is a brilliant in “Lecturn” and “Sieve”, both 2002, where sublime expansiveness
construction, a kind of primitive abstract dance, in the Dionysian spirit and concentrated force are exquisitely integrated. It is as though
of Stravisnky’s “Rites of Spring”. The dancer is caught at the moment each of Van de Bovenkamp’s sculptures embodies what Abraham
he swings through space with all the momentum he has, becoming Maslow calls a “peak experience”, more particularly, a peak
an abstract assemblage of intense shapes. I am no doubt overstating experience of creativity itself. The vertical element seems like a
the figural analogy, but most of Van de Bovenkamp’s Menhirs seem launching pad for a creative explosion, a pyrotechnic, unstable display
to be dancing in space, with many of their parts suspended in of vitality that goes against the inertia of the earth on which the
space, as though liberated from the earth, however bound to it by stable Menhir is placed, indeed, in which it is sometimes rooted as
the base of the work. I am trying to convey the rhythmic dynamic with “Sieve”.
of Van de Bovenkamp’s constructions, their musical quality, indeed, However upright and prehistoric Menhir stands, and however
complex harmony. It is a posed polyphony in “Break Away”, “Menhir high it reaches, it remains an ineluctable extension of the earth
Amaranth” and Quince”, all 2001, and romantically extravagant in because it is made of stone. Its mystery resides in its innate epic
“Ginnungagap”, 2002. All of Van de Bovenkamp’s sculptures are density as well its ritual relationship with other Menhirs. But Van
modernist in their use of the fragment, but each fragment has a life de Bovenkamp’s Menhir, made of flexible metal, is inherently more
of its own, subliminally attuned to the life of every other fragment. lyrical and most importantly, in and of itself, a relational structure.

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