Joël Bonk – Sculptures & Printing techniques- The Netherlands
Joël Bonk is a Dutch artist who grew up in Zwolle. After studying and working in graphic design, he continued his artistic study at the Artez Academy. At the start of his study, Joël made a permanent shift to Fine art. In the middle of the education he left his hometown to continue and finish his study at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Nowadays he lives and works in Gorinchem, where he’s making sculptures and paintings combined with printing techniques.
The use of lines, threads, wires and chords are key to his work, with it he tends to display the underlying fibers and structures of the human anatomy. In this way, he is trying to create a dialog between human and its inner world. With the use of bright colors and a lot of beautiful dark like the universe that surrounds everything, Joël makes the analogy of our inner universe.
“The body is the source of our awareness, inseparably connected with the mind… Everything is perceived through the body (scale and senses).” Jos de Mul on embodied cognition in his book ‘Artificial by nature’
Throughout his career he mainly focused on the philosophy of the body in the form of anatomical studies, using his own body and appearance in the process. Appreciating the thoughts and ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on ‘Embodiment’ and the ‘Mind-body dualism’ of Helmuth Plessner, Joël still finds it relevant today to ask the question; what is a human? Or better, what is it like to be human?