LA RENAISSANCE

Alluding to a leaf, a raindrop, a seed, a willow or a mother with child, the piece titled La Renaissance by Max Jungblut represents both a culmination of the working process and philosophy of the artist, as well as a radical departure and new beginning.

For the past ten years, the artistic process in which artist and designer Jungblut reworks and refines industrialised wood in order to bring it closer to a more natural state has resulted in a number of high-end design works and objects. Although earlier projects such as Spatial Object (2009) and Reconciliation (2016) already play with the notion of the autonomous object-as-art, this project seems to signal in a definitive break with any reference to functionality, instead fully appealing to our faculties of memory and imagination.

The creation of La Renaissance follows an intuitive method forming its lines and organic shape, using the signature tile-lath structure that has become so characteristic of the pieces by Jungblut. The resulting piece looks monumental, but vulnerable. Both feminine and playful. The finishing of the wood structure reveals some parts being sanded, while others remain untouched. With this, Jungblut seems to again walk the fine balance between the natural and the industrial, between the innate and the man-made.

Guus van Engelshoven, Curator