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| Press Release | |
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19th of May 2006 Article: Juul Jacobs (Holland, 1976), will be exhibiting his extraordinary sculptures and installations at LCB through till Saturday 24th of June
By: Eva Shakouri Torreadrado
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Under the title Re-evolution, Juul explores hypothetical scenarios depicting the future of our species. The result is a freaky experiment which looks colourful and funny on the surface, creepy and unsettling when you stop to consider the implications.
CURATORS: Amir and Eva Shakouri Torreadrado
OFFICIAL OPENING / PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 19th of May from 20:30 h
LOCATION: La Caja Blanca, Calle Verí 9, 07001 Palma de Mallorca, Spain
MORE INFORMATION: Eva Shakouri Torreadrado Tel. 0034 971 722 364, Email. info@lacajablanca.com, Web. www.lacajablanca.com |
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Juul Jacobs was born in Nijmegen, Holland in 1976. He lives in a planet of his own, and fantasises about the future, giving form to the 'shape of things to come', through his fetishist, plastic sculptures.
His exhibition showing at the LCB Gallery until the 24th of June, presents a series of sculptures which parody society's obsession with the future, and with 'keeping up with the times' through the compulsive consumption of technologically sophisticated, utterly useless gadgets.
A warning for those who have visited our previous exhibition and enjoyed Yara El-Sherbini's intellectually arresting criticism of Western Society: Juul doesn't care whether the CIA planes are coming to Mallorca for a quick spell of sun & sea, or whether veiled school girls are arrested in Paris for working undercover. Juul's world is inhabited by characters like Roy and Luke (who dress like they are in a space shuttle, and live in a computer game...) and Androgyny, a creature which represents our obsession with the individual, to the extreme of wanting to control the shape, size, colour, length of life and intellect of our offspring.
Re-evolution is Juul Jacob's first solo show in Spain. The young artist has taken a series of features which are characteristic of his generation, caricaturised them to an absurd extreme in order to get a vision for what our future may be like if current obsessions were to become fundamental aspects of our social fabric. The result, is a freaky experiment which looks colourful and funny on the surface, creepy and unsettling when you consider the implications.
What impact is the increasing ubiquity of technology in every aspect of our life, having on the evolution of our species? Are the digital and scientific revolutions we are witnessing accelerating the pace of evolution or distorting it?
The Work His signature pieces are the extraordinarily intricate sculptures he creates using different types of plastics, and electronic circuits. The pieces, which appear to be industrially produced, are the result of true craftsmanship. The techniques used by this artist involve, creating his own moulds, combining different types of plastic with different pigments in order to obtain an extraordinarily rich palate of colours, textures and finishes. Each piece is the result of a painstaking process of super imposition of layers, each polished by hand in order to obtain their characteristic "shiny glass" appearance.
The artist Juul graduated from the Utrecht School of Arts (HKU) in 2002 having completed a Bachelor's degree in fine art, specialising in three dimensional creation techniques. As the top student in his promotion, he was short listed for the prestigious "Prince Bernhard Culturefund, Utrecht".
In his CV, a string of individual and collective exhibitions in established institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, Frozen Fountain in Amsterdam), cutting edge urban interventions (Blend Guerrilla store in Rotterdam, Church meets Techno in Germany), and private art galleries (Galerie Lous Martin in Delft, Gallery Deux Poissons in Tokyo, Galerie Ra in Amsterdam).
The truth is that at first sight it is difficult to determine whether his sleek pieces fall in the category of art or urban design. His latest series of sculptures, takes this on board as an inherent part of his discourse as an artist. |
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