Name: Hans van Bentem
Born: The Netherlands, 1965
ARTZUID edition(s): ARTZUID 2023
About Hans van Bentem
Hans van Bentem graduated in 1988 in Monumental Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Initially he focused on figurative painting, but over time he felt more attracted to sculpture. He specialized in working with ceramics, followed by materials such as crystal, wood, porcelain and bronze, alone or in conjunction with each other.
Not only is his use of materials eclectic, so is his baroque visual language, which combines contemporary forms from mass culture with images from (art) history and even pure fantasy figures. Many of his works are monumental in size or belong to installation art. In this, several materials and objects come together in an apparently random whole. Van Bentem seems to absorb the world around him like a sponge. He looks at it with a fresh, playful look full of wonder, almost like a child. In addition to fairy-tale-like, his work is often realistic, cartoonish, and sometimes erotic, but above all exciting and eclectic.
For ARTZUID, Van Bentem has created a new sculpture: Tingeling. All kinds of existing objects, which he has collected over time, are strung in a steel construction. Van Bentem attaches great value to traditional craftsmanship. For the elaboration of the designs of his sculptures, he selects the best international workshops, where people often work from the local tradition and knowledge of materials. The crystal comes from the Czech Republic, the wood is worked in Senegal, the bronze is cast in India and the porcelain comes from China. The ceramics for his sculptures are manufactured in the Netherlands.