Nina van de Ven

Art and circus are intimately related. Like lion tamers, artists make their material jump through burning hoops. They are trapeze artists, defying the laws of gravity to astonish and entertain. In Nina van de Ven’s work, the clownish aspect makes a frequent appearance. The reliefs she made at EKWC reference their silly costumes and mocking humour, reducing the fierce Dutch lion to a pitiful emaciated creature. A ceramic Billy Roll (aka Meat Clown) is nearly bursting with inner tension, the sliced face distorted in horror worthy of Stephen King. This dark undercurrent also appears in the first sculpture Van de Ven ever made. Its base is a grinning military marching boot the size of a clown’s shoe, a jointless leg doubles as an arm and the top is a hand of Sabazios with several limb fingers and eclectic symbols. Together they form a rather ominous reliquary – holding what exactly? Exploring the possibilities of translating her largely two-dimensional, drawing-based practice into 3D, Van de Ven, worked first, and thereafter primarily, with hand-building techniques, building her floor-sitting sculpture in segments with interlocking, stacking parts and her large reliefs in quadrants from the slab technique. She worked with black and white matte glazes (to mimic the appearance of charcoal, graphite, etc.) on both black and white clay bodies and experimented with a range of firing temperatures to achieve the desired colouration. Small touches of platinum lusters were applied for third firings.