Levante is an Italian word meaning rising (Sol Levante = rising sun). Levante means also East. Originally the design of this artwork is generated by two cones: their bases are connected and their points too. The marble cones are bent to create a new inner space, through which the viewer looks further to the horizon. Levante is hope and potential, reflecting the attitude of its author, who keeps himself open to the future and lets new creative ideas rise from his inner space. In this historical moment Levante is also a call for peace.
Contact is inspired by life in times of coronavirus. Cornelis continues is research combining marble and stainless steel. The circular steel base is an integral part of the sculpture. Its watery and reflecting surface mirrors the marble cone, creating a contact effect. In its purity of shape, the artwork turns into a symbol of social distancing, as virus spreads through droplet transmission.
Contact, marble and stainless steel, 48×18 cm, 2020
Cornelis was inspired by exploration of gender in contemporary society. A Carrara marble abstract artwork, pure and elegant, rises as the third gender above distinctions. Female and male symbolic lines are melted in a new shape, sharp and delicate at the same time. A new 3D icon to reflect on human identity.
3D Moebius Ring was a challenge to transform the bi-dimensional original soft shape to a 3D marble ring. The goal: perfection and fluidity through a long process of calculation and translation into matter. Patience, constancy and care were the main ingredients to reach fineness and harmony.
From 15th March to the end of April 2019, a selection of abstract works by the Dutch sculptor Cornelis Rijken will be exhibited in the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank overlooking Piazza del Popolo in Faenza.
Cornelis, by now casolano of adoption since 2007, proposes small sculptures in Carrara marble, stainless steel, black granite and bronze that express themes dear to him such as the infinite, the void and the essence. The art critic Silvia Pegoraro wrote about him:
“The paradox of art – evident above all in sculpture – is to express a mental or spiritual concept through matter, and in Rijken’s work the tension between matter and mind is particularly noticeable: the mathematical symbol of the infinite translated in fascinating sculptural forms it is a vivid and effective testimony. And this is how his sculpture can be perceived as a sort of tense bow of the spirit, which adds many more to the three dimensions of space. All this is possible thanks to the ability to create a metamorphosis of the material, transforming metal and stone, with their hardness and static nature into organic and dynamic forms, which can best be described using the concepts of fluidity and flight. Cornelis Rijken is therefore one of the most interesting exponents of an artistic research aimed at renewing sculpture in the sign of a release from the constraint of volume and weight, recovering unfathomable elements such as emptiness and energy from the composition. “
Cornelis’s sculpture is also and above all monumental, like “La porta del pensiero”, a work in Carrara marble from 2011, located in the Marina di Ravenna dock.
You can visit his atelier and sculpture garden in Casola Valsenio, by appointment:
Cornelis Rijken
Porcaticcio di Sopra
Via San Lorenzo 5, Casola Valsenio RA
349 0908697
cornelis.rijken@gmail.com
artcornelis.com
Cornelis was inspired by the human search for perfection. Pi is an irrational and transcendental number. Pi artwork is a perfect metal sphere in its totality, but it is made up of three different sizes of circles that do not always manage to touch each other. Perfection in imperfection as a human condition results in beauty and harmony. The circle is a basic geometric shape used by the artist and here the single circles are united to create the main sphere: Pi is also the leit motiv of the full process. The iron artwork is currently placed in the garden of the sculptor’s residence in Italy.
Art Cornelis 