Catalogue Now Age

Nick van Woert has a background in architecture and he is fascinated by antiquity. He 'hijacks' – as he puts it – art history in order to realise his remarkable, distorted sculptures. Van Woert is mainly interested in the way that modern society has voluntarily replaced pure materials like stone and wood with artificial versions made of plaster and plastic: His comment on this: “Architecture has moved from stone to Styrofoam”.

According to Van Woert, his works embody the contemporary tendency to keep history alive visually, but not materially. He emphasises this by opting for excessively banal materials such as cat litter filling and PVC. City archaeologist that he is, he tracks down convenient stores, factories and dumpsters where he lives in Brooklyn in search of usable ingredients. In primitive cultures stone sculptures may once have been brim-full of mystical significance; Van Woert has hollowed them out, both literally and figuratively.