This is the first of what is anticipated to be regular exhibitions held at the elegant Toren Hotel on Keizersgracht in the heart of Amsterdam. ArtsTalk’s Jacob John Shale went along to the opening of the show on the 16th of April and talked to the artist in the hotel’s beautiful courtyard garden . . .
ARTSTALK
The sculpture I was most taken with was the one of the diver. Could you describe the genesis of that?
RAMON SCHALKX
That’s a beautiful story, which I got from national geographic. The Bajau people are from Indonesia, and they are genetically changed for swimming underwater. And the thing is, I love nature. Nature is the first thing I’m always concerned about, and what some of my work is about, and these people live in harmony with nature. They only take from the ocean what they need. If they use other methods then accidents appear. I love that story. So I made this fisherman who is an eighty year old man, living from the ocean, in the ocean.
ARTSTALK
Have you visited the Bajau people?
RAMON SCHALKX
No, unfortunately not. But I would love to.
ARTSTALK
And do you think that this impacts the sculpture in some way, that it’s not based on direct experience?
RAMON SCHALKX
Well, some of the sculptures are like that. Most of the abstract sculptures I make. For example, the dancers who are in the heart shape – that’s a story about experience. I’m always intrigued by dancers.
ARTSTALK
What about them is intriguing to you?
RAMON SCHALKX
It’s the movement, the elegance, the expression of feelings and joy and sadness that they can manage to send out with their bodies. Besides that, it’s the hard work they put into it, the effort they put into it to get to that level. So I got into contact with Peter Leung, who was dancing with the national ballet of the Netherlands, and I had several conversations with him about dance, about creational dance. And he said to me: well, Ramon, don’t try to make the ballet dancer like they all do. You make something that is not possible for the human body. Where my art stops, your art starts.
ARTSTALK
So it’s not simply imitation?
RAMON SHALKX
No, not at all. This is pure imagination, for the love of dance. It’s a homage. It’s the next step after their art.
ARTSTALK
Is there any way in which these sculptures deviate from your previous works, or do you see it as more of a continuation?
RAMON SCHALKX
It’s more of a continuation. It grows and grows and grows. When I started twenty years ago with sculpting, I started with abstract sculptures. After half a year I won a prize for young talent in our surroundings, a big art collector bought some of my work. Then after a few years making abstracts, I also started making sculptures in wax. So these two separate ways were evolving at the same time, and at one moment I thought: OK, I want to bring these two together. So if you see the woman dancing in the marble blanket – the marble blanket is abstract all the way, it’s stone, but then you have the bronze dancer inside that. They are joined together. Those two worlds which were separate are fused in that sculpture for the first time.
ARTSTALK
What do you have planned next?
RAMON SCHALKX
I’m working on a new hand, which also involves nature. I want to express that we’re intertwined with nature, that we’re destroying it but we are completely the same actually. We cannot live without each-other.
