I make sculptures, mostly in ceramcs, drawings and commissioned works in public space. My work is narrative of characterisation, and is composed of figurative, generic images. I prefer images which represent the melancholic. In my attempts to deal with the totality of life, I feel it is necessary to relate to death. The thought of the finiteness of everything makes life meaningful, and on the other hand it is frightening, because it undrmines day to day life.
I am inspired by Medieval sculptures, comics and pornography. What interests me in these sources is the depiction of the human deficit and the morbit aspects of life. By mixing these subjects with humour and by the use of bright colours and by incorporating materials as sequins, found objects and buttons I achieve some distance from my starting point. This meditation allows me to make the original morbidity manageable and to give it a bearable character. This ambiguity betweem the dramatic images and the flippant way in which the works are made, causes a tension, which can be seen as a way to ridicule melancholic. As such, I consider making art as an attempt to deal with death and to represent the melancholia and the helplessness that arises in the tension between true happiness and inevitable failing.
Gijs Assmann | The knowlegde she is not faking | 2007 aquarelic, acrylic, collage, rope | 1,26 x 0,75 m | Courtesy galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag, the Netherlands
