Hello
Thank you for visiting my website. I hope that observing and investigating my machines and mechanisms
will enjoy you. It actually is one of my main goals, enjoying people. Art is a way to communicate by vision,
talking with the eyes and since the eyes are the our best developed senses, it is a beautiful and very broad
way. Colour, Composition, Shape are just a few characteristics, however our eyes are most sensitive to... Motion! A
changing environment always catches our attention and this speciality is the power of Kinetic Art.
About Myself
I grew up in an old house at an old farm with a lot of (useful) rubbish around.
In my earliest memory, I guess at an age of 3, I remember myself trying to unscrew
my mother’s kitchen. It shows how life always can be split up: first you
have the period of braking things down, after you have the period of (re)building
things.
Since the time I was released from the continuous supervision of my parents
I am building, creating and inventing. Up to the age of 10 I used wood mostly,
since the machines needed for working with steel were too dangerous, they said.
I built wagons and machines to pull with my pedal tractor, swords to fight
against the cows, sheep and birds, bow an arrow to shoot hares and ducks (I
was bad at shooting though) and later on rafts and ‘boats’. My
biggest ‘boat’ was
6 meter long; 1.5 meter wide with a cabin of 0.70 meter above the water level,
consisting of 13 jerry cans underneath, a sharp bow, two big paddles and a
flag. It had six nets at the sides to store the many fish we caught at the
canals.
At the age of 10 I started working in a small garage for agricultural equipment
and machinery. The first half year I was busy sorting bolts and nuts. After
I had to reorganize the storehouse, which made me a real storekeeper. The interesting
thing was, that the place was filled with lots of used, old and unordinary machine
parts. It always made me curious and finding out what it was used or.. what
it could be used for. Besides I more and more frequently was asked to help building
and repairing machines. My small hands were useful for precision work what I
always found an honour. Practically I learned all the skills at this garage
up to the age of 18.
During the time at high school I came in contact with arts. My teacher of arts
gradually introduced me to the many facets and my interest grew steadily. Looking
back at my highschool period I can conclude at that time I was a very poetic
and symbolic oriented. Any small object I used had to represent an idea, feeling,
but could not be useless. The same counted for the poetry and music I was writing.
Every word or note was meant to represent something. That this would be sometimes
too much is something my teacher tried to learn me. The final work for the high
school exams on arts I consider as my first artistic work. It was the first
time a work was satisfying. It also had been the first time I used ready mades
extensively and gave them a unexpected new function, different than what they
were designed for. This surprised me much and became one of the major aspects
in my creations.
Since the start of my studies at Delft University of Technology (I started
my studies with aerospace engineering but after two years I switched to mechanical
engineering) I was full of (wild) ideas, huge complex sculptures which I draw
on the back of a coaster, late night at the bar. However the creation of ideas
wasn't the problem, building the works didn't really happen. In 2002 I realized
that you can't be an artist of ideas, but have to work, put all your effort
in the process of creation. I started to spend many hours in building by which
I used the opposite approach: quick easy conceptual drawings and ambiguous ideas
of how to produce it. The process in the workshop and the (accidentally) found
ready mades would determine the final result more than the conceptual idea.
The hands and the objects turned out to be the leading aspects.
Almost nothing from the period until the start of my studies at the University
has remained. However in many later works I included elements from this time.
For instance 'Invention of the Barrel-Organ' contains the paddle wheel of my
'catamaran boat' which I build when I was 11. Nowadays my focus is more on the
mechanism design, the kinematics, the trajectory of motion. Instead of having
the mechanism determine what happens, which is normal in any machine, I rather
have a free object play the important role. In the Sisyphus machine 'De Mazzelaar'
for instance, the mechanism tries to keep touch onto the stone, however the
stone plays with mechanism that has to do its utmost best to not lose control.
This leads to a spontaneous and playful mechanism with which something unexpected
could happen any time.
Volkert van der Wijk.
See here for pictures of my storage
of Ready Mades
and of my workshop
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