Anton Reijnders

FRACAS is very pleased to collaborate for a second time with Atelier Jespers, run by Jean-François Declercq.

FRACAS is an object-oriented gallery, mixing art, crafts and design. Wishing to highlight the link between art and function, the gallery present emerging international artists. After having established for several years in the centre of Brussels, the gallery has become nomadic since December 2019.

Atelier Jespers is based in Oscar Jespers' modernist house and workshop, built in 1928 by the great architect Victor Bourgeois. The desired ambiguity between a workshop and a house stimulates creativity and gives the events that take place there a moment of intimacy in a semi-public setting.

Anton Reijnders wants to offer opportunities for concentration and attention and as such providing an alternative to the visual language that is increasingly is subservient to propaganda and quick effects. He hopes his works evokes awareness of the automatism in which meaning is attributed and the conditioned way of perceiving. He does not want to impose a way of interpreting his work: his sculptures are a free meditative opportunity for reflection and concentration.

Throughout his career, Anton has built a very personal alphabet of shapes and symbols. His ever renewed way of playing and assembling these representations creates a process that explores the structure and patterns of mental constructions. The making itself echoes this idea where repetitive forms made from moulds can be associated with hand-sculpted clay directly embodying a human presence. The juxtaposition of thing that diverge sometimes triggers disarray or attraction. The soft with the hard, the rough and the smooth, the empty and the full question our perception and help to give it meaning.

His works are sometimes referred to as sculptural kōans. A poetic sensibility where the space left between objects is as important as the objects themselves can connect his work to oriental aesthetics. Anton refers to a Japanese painter called Sesshu as an important source of his inspiration. In these ‘Haboku Landscape’, most of the paper is left blank and a few black ink strokes reveal a vast space and show an intense focus on the essence of landscape.

FRACAS Gallery

Anton Reijnders, born in Netherlands in 1955, has been active as a sculptor for more than 38 years.

Besides participating in exhibitions throughout the world Anton Reijnders has contributed to conferences, symposia and workshops in Korea, China, Australia, USA and Europe.

His works of art have been selected to be part of public collection of  :

Shiwan Ceramic Museum / Guangdong (CN), World Ceramic Center / Icheon (KR), Australian National University / Canberra (AU), KANEKO / Ohama (US),…

Anton has been visiting professor at the New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred (US).

He contributed to the creation of the European Ceramic Work Center (EKWC) in ’s-Hertogenbosch (NL).

Anton Reijnders currently teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL).