Many of our readers first discovered sculptor Harma Heikens‘ powerful, uncompromising work in HF Vol.13two years ago. Her near-life sized sculptures are beautiful, difficult, and expertly crafted. Often times, they’rebased on actual newspaper reports and headlines of atrocities in war torn countries.
Here’s an excerpt from the article we published:“I’m not into telling people that they see things the ‘wrong’ way,” says the Netherland artist. “When I make a sculpture of, say, a Latin-American or Asian looking child in horrible circumstances it is perceived as social criticism, but when I make a sculpture of a white child in a similar situation it is perceived as apocalyptic (except in Russia, where it’s social criticism). That doesn’t feel good and it is confrontational in itself (for whoever wants to see it), but there’s no way of avoiding it. The images I work with sort of pre-exist in people’s minds. It works the same way for me.”
And therein lies one of the most appealing aspects of Heikens’ work. Though her statements are well articulated, it’s not a soapbox stance, but neither does she resort to “leaving it all up to the viewer.”Rather what we make of it is an amalgamation of the artist intention and our built-in perceptionsculled from our own reference banks. ” Get a look at the sculpture that Heikens’ created just for the Hi-Fructose exhibition at Roq La Rue galleryMarch 1th in Seattle. Check out studio shots, turn-arounds and more after the jump.
