Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art will host installation and sculpture artist Folkert de Jong to campus on April 5 as part of the visiting artist and scholar lecture series. A practicing artist whose work frequently relates to history and politics as well art history, de Jong will deliver a lecture at 5:30 p.m. in room S151 of the art school. The lecture is free, and the public is invited to attend.
Since its inception in 1997, the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture series has brought more than 50 distinguished guests to the school of art. Visiting artists and scholars spend three days on campus interacting with students and faculty, the culmination of which is a public lecture on the subject of the artist’s or scholar’s work.
De Jong studied at the Academy for Visual Arts and the Rijksacademy for Visual Arts, both in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has held residencies in New York, the Netherlands, Norway, France and India. De Jong is represented by the James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. He utilizes a variety of media and material, including polyurethane foam, to create sculptural installations that explore themes such as war, greed, colonialism and history, along with the accompanying moral and ethical issues.
“Art is for me a medium to explore and take a position about life and the human condition,” de Jong has said. “The materials that I use in my artwork are dealing with the total opposite of that. They are hi-tech chemical petroleum based insulation materials, industrially mass produced and used often invisible but on a global scale inside of the appliances of mass consumption products. It is in this juxtaposition between the references of the materials versus my artistic ideas that my motive starts to emerge from the actual visible artwork.”
The Lamar Dodd School of Art is located at 270 River Road on the UGA campus; room S151 is located on the first floor of the building. For further information, see http://art.uga.edu.
