Ralph de Jong: Frontspace: The egg has settled

In the front space of the gallery Dürst Britt & Mayhew has invited Ralph de Jongh to make a solo presentation.

Ralph de Jongh’s work immediately touches the viewer’s senses. His objects possess both sculptural and pictorial characteristics and are not easy to categorise. They are very tactile and evoke associations with candy or icing on a cake. The viewer can hardly contain himself from touching the work and some people even confess to wanting to lick it. These reflexes spring from De Jongh’s use of pastel-colour and tactile materials like polystyrene and burlap. His works are characterized by craft, the beauty of small imperfections and the realisation that the material an artist works with also has a will of its own. It is this interplay between controlling the making process and the influence of the unpredictable that typifies De Jongh’s practice.

At first sight De Jongh’s works may come across as abstract. They are nevertheless well connected to the world surrounding us. His most recent works on show at Dürst Britt & Mayhew take their inspiration from images from a canonical French cookbook that was published for the first time in the 1950s.

Attracted mostly by dishes with egg-preparations and banana-desserts, De Jongh has transformed the beautifully arranged plates into abstract colour patterns that evoke associations with galaxies and bird’s eye views. By using oil stick and pastel he manages to give his drawings his typical tactile feeling. The granularity of the oilstick is mirrored in the polystyrene balls in the artist made frames. This way De Jongh cleverly manages to merge the seemingly different media of drawing and sculpture.

Ralph de Jongh (1978, living and working in Haarlem) received his BFA from Artez/AKI in Enschede. He is co-founder of nomadic artist’s initiative Sugarpop Institute and recently had solo presentations at Prospects and Concepts at Art Rotterdam, The Supermarket in Stockholm and Zoete Broodjes in Amsterdam. He participated in group exhibitions at 37PK and Nieuwe Vide in Haarlem, Performance Bar Worm in Rotterdam, Quartair in The Hague and De Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. He was nominated for both DeAanzet! Prize and de Scheffer Prize. Work by De Jongh is held in private and public collections including the Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar and the Rijnstate Collection, Arnhem.