“A construction about hoisting, pulling, falling – sometimes, a piece simply falls off the installation – and also floating. Forty or more lumps of clay of ten kilos each are bundled up with rope. By means of a wooden construction, that lumbering mass must be pulled up.  He spent four hours to get the work ten centimeters off the ground. Aching muscles, blisters, cursing and moaning – all part of it – the clay is trapped, squished together, or as Wim himself puts it: “clay that abuses itself”. Why would you do this as an artist, is the question of course. Why would you want to?  First of all, because it produces an interesting image, an image that doesn’t just exude this material quality, but which is also slightly frightening. Because all that weight – what if the clay has hardened and comes crashing down? Secondly, because Wim does not want things differently.  His work here gives the suggestion of a lightness that can hide in the heavy. This is a coincidental effect, as Wim states that he never focuses on how something should come to look before he makes it. The battle of making, he says, is always “honest and fair” – just like the blisters on his hands. His every piece of research, and every machine he makes, must be an adventure: and we do not not beforehand where that adventure will end.”

Lucette ter Borg
Kunstcritica NRC Handelsblad
i.o.v. CBK Groningen

Februari 2016