ACCUMULATIONS OF DECISIONS, ACCIDENTS, AND INTERVENTIONS: IN CONVERSATION WITH KASPAR DEJONG

Moving between different media creates a sense of freedom that allows a different kind of encounter with a specific idea. Painting, for me, is a space for slowing down, where I can always return to. Whilst sculpture, or working on large-scale installations, gets way more physical and site-specific. Collaborations, or other moments of exchanging, become extensions of that process. I like to see them as ways of testing how far something can shift while still holding onto its origin. I'd say it's more about setting up conditions where things can evolve through layering, collecting, and reconfiguring. The "why" sits in that curiosity: trying to understand how meaning is built over time, how something accumulates presence, and how it can be altered without losing its sense of place and history.

It tends to move in both directions, rather than starting from one fixed point. Sometimes a material triggers something; for example, its weight, its history, the way it's been used or weathered that can become a starting point. Other times there's a more intuitive idea or image, and the material comes later as a way to give it form. I'm interested in materials that already carry a certain charge: industrial remnants, treated surfaces, things that have been exposed to use or time. They're not neutral, and that friction is important. It creates a dialogue between what I'm trying to do and what the material allows or resists. So instead of committing to one material language, I try to stay responsive. The work develops through that negotiation between intention and what's already embedded in the material. In that sense, concept and material are constantly informing each other, rather than one simply following the other.

A lot of it begins outside, or at least is shaped there. Walking, collecting, noticing; those moments are not separate from the work but part of its starting point. The city acts like an active field where things are constantly shifting, accumulating, or being discarded. The work actually often starts before anything is made. It begins in those encounters with fragments, textures, or situations that hold something unresolved. The studio then becomes a place where those impressions are reconfigured, but they still carry the conditions they came from.

It changes the pace and the level of attention you give to things that might otherwise remain intuitive. A lot of what I'm already drawn to; surfaces that carry time, damage, repair exists quite naturally in the work. But by framing it as research, it becomes something you can return to more deliberately, almost like building a vocabulary around it. Working with conservation techniques, or studying how layers are formed through use, vandalism, or restoration, also shifts perspective. You start to see surfaces less as images and more as accumulations of decisions, accidents, and interventions over time. At the same time, I try not to let it become too fixed or academic. The research isn't there to explain the work, but to sharpen the sensitivity towards what's already happening within it. It gives structure, but it still needs to leave space for intuition and unpredictability.

In those cases, it's less about adding something new and more about positioning or reframing what's already there. The material already carries a lot of information, time, use, exposure, so the work becomes a matter of deciding how much to intervene without flattening that complexity. What I add is often quite minimal: just to the point to read those traces differently. It's about creating a condition where the material can speak in another way, rather than covering it.

It's hard to compare those. Fashion comes with a completely different outline and speed. The work moves with a body, enters daily life, gets worn, folded, exposed to use in a way that a gallery setting can't offer. It shifts from something you stand in front of to something that circulates, that's touched and inhabited. What's interesting there is that the work becomes less fixed. It's not just about composition or surface anymore, but about how it behaves in motion, how it adapts, how it gets reinterpreted through wear. There's also a different audience, people who might not encounter the work in an art context, but engage with it more directly.

It can change the conditions around the work, rather than the core of it. Time is your biggest friend sometimes when it comes to creating, letting things sit for a while. Grants can give you that, and create time, space, and room to slow things down, to test ideas that don't need to be good immediately, or to work at a scale that wouldn't always be possible otherwise. It allows for a certain level of risk. You can follow something more intuitive or speculative without needing it to be productive right away. That can shift the depth of the process, how long something is allowed to evolve, or how far you push a material or idea.

The connection developed quite organically through people, conversations, and a shared interest. What I found there was a certain attentiveness to materials, to detail, and to the passage of time that resonates closely with how I work. There's a different rhythm in how things are observed and handled. Small shifts, subtle traces, or signs of use are given space and value, rather than being overlooked. That creates a context where my work doesn't need to assert itself loudly, it can exist in a more quiet, precise way.

I have no clue, really. these things always come along naturally. Whilst working on one project, the other thing simultaneously arises. I would like to get more involved in public works in public spaces, and see things unfolding in different contexts. What interests me is how the work adapts, how it can move between cities, materials, and collaborations while still holding onto the same underlying core. The next chapter is probably about going further into that. Expanding scale in some cases, but also refining things in others, becoming more precise in how little is actually needed. I'm interested in pushing the balance between control and letting things happen, and in creating situations where the work can exist more openly, whether that's in public space, in books, or through collaborations.