A solo show by Tom Volkaert at Everyday Gallery.
Opening Saturday 16 September 1 – 6 PM.

Tom Volkaert, born in Antwerp in 1989, lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Volkaert’s sculptural work is a carefully balanced combination of refined artistic craftsmanship and the strategic use of unpredictability that comes into play when working with enamelled ceramics, epoxy or oxidized metal. Many of his works consist of circles on legs, which the artist likes to call steering-wheels.
These works are like totems: symbolic and organic artefacts that make present the otherworldly alien life in the cosmos and that puts us in touch with something radically different from us. On the edges and inside these circles, contorted arachnoid limbs, intestines and sickly satanic tongues are carefully arranged and held in suspended animation. It is as if these circles are portals to another cosmic dimension and something wholly other than human life is trying to get through, a lumpy otherworldly and alienated organic gesturing at us in a way that feels both familiar and estranging. But Volkaert’s so-called steering wheels are also a totem for his own life and memories, a way of navigating and coming to terms with his own life. Volkaert’s sculptures establish a connection to the matrixial mother in which all creativity is situated, making the viewer receptive to the most intimate and estranging experience of being alive.

Artists: Tom Volkaert