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CITIES - sculptures and land art

Izmir

The city of Izmir invited ten sculptors to make sculptures from scrap metal during the Waste Material Mask Workshop.

Les Izmirables - 2013 - assemblage of objets trouvés - steel-scrap metal sculpture - Izmir TR

In general my sculpture is the result of a calculated approach; it is mostly preconceived. The geometry of form intrigues me and not only offers me the solutions which I seek, but proposes new ideas to investigate. In the spring of 2013 the municipality of Konak-Izmir invited me to a sculpture symposium which had the theme "the mask". Though my work is concrete and thus non-representational I found this a challenge. But the material to be used was scrap metal. Nevertheless this did not deter me from accepting the invitation and I headed for Izmir. Mostly my sculpture results from a preconceived plan - So going to a scrapyard and not knowing what is to be found there was an adventure to say the least. It was not my intention to find material which could be transformed into new, useable parts out of which I would be able to make a sculpture which would be in line with my other work. For this workshop I let go of my programmed way of working and became a discoverer.

For me the sculpture which was to crystalize had to be one which would not deny its origin: being an object of which the parts are legible and can be traced back to their previous function. At the same time it had to answer to the theme of our assignment: the mask. We went to the Konak Municipality's scrap yard three times. The very first time I had seen a thirty year old Turkish FATİH garbage truck which had been in a frontal crash. The bumper already had the characteristics of a face. Its "eyes", the headlights, were lost. But the three rectangular openings were for me enough to constitute the facial characteristics of a mask. A ready made, by literal accident turned into an objet trouvé.

The International scrap metal Metal Mask workshop:
participants: Lucien de Arend - Finland, Nedim Hadziahmetovic - Serbia, Omar Toussoun - Egypt and Suat Karaaslan, Gökçen Ergür, Varol Topaç, Ercan Yilmaz, Neda İsmail Atar, Derviç Ergün and Ahmet Özparlak from Turkey.

the workshop/symposium

CITIES

works©author: Lucien den Arend
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