Hans Hovy: Sculptullery

Artist list

Hans Hovy

In the works of Dutch artist Hans Hovy, form and mastery of the material set the tone. Fortunately, these characteristics don’t conflict with Hovy’s ‘subdued rebelliousness’: everything he creates breathes a subtle lightness. He shifts effortlessly from installations, sculptures and drawings, to carpets or jewellery. As an authentic free artist, Hovy gives preference to artistic expression over medium or technique. Thus, a supply of solid ebony in his studio last year led to an impromptu question of how heavy could a necklace actually be; an agreement for a solo exhibition was then quickly made.

For some time, now, sausage forms dominate Hovy’s work: squat sausages, club-like sausages, sausage-like sausages. Executed in silky-soft ebony, necklaces and rings emerge nearly as a matter of course, their seductive shapes intensified or ringed with clouds of dot patterns. For this, Hovy hammered fine silver into the wood, by now some 90 linear metres of silver wire. The results are three-dimensional drawings, sculptures made for wearing, jewellery as sculpture: in short, Sculptullery.

Ward Schrijver