Timothy Segers
A Move Through Skill
Timothy Segers’ work is about the suggestion of freedom. Having enjoyed an academic education in film, cultural studies, product development, sculpture and trained as a blacksmith, Timothy Segers’work is characterised by the integration of sculptures into their surroundings and their adaptability to constantly changing situations. His skilfully produced art pieces find endless possibilities for they can be limitlessly moved and/or re-attached. In this manner, the artist encourages a new form of dialogue between the spectator and the work of art in an ever evolving context. This implies a radical breakaway from the framed pictures and the closed and static suggestions that rule the art scene. The spectator becomes the creator being granted the liberty to determine the stance of the work of art receiving an active dramaturgic role to shape his own environment.
Segers’ quest for a thorough examination of materials, brings him to existential questions on the subject of creation itself, as well as its direction and movement. Challenging the limits of function and space to ultimately overcome them, Timothy Segers’ art pieces fulfill the desire to break down the walls of matter and dimension. They tend to visually outgrow and transcend their own spatiality owning a hue of infinity.
Black velveteen steel cut-outs are titled ‘Utop series’ in homage to The Great Utopia, the Russian and Soviet avant-garde. These dark moth-like figures stem from improvisational distorted light drawings, for which vectoring programs were used. The quickly warped sketches, produced in powder-coated steel graphical shapes, can be pinned with magnets on the wall and are customisable to any given environment. These sculptures defy perspective by the dimensionality they create. Light spaces of void have been incised through the rough thickness of steel. Timothy Segers’ work thrives on the transformation of matter, shaping it to challenge the traditional notions of aesthetics. In doing so, the artist has the ability to alter the perceptions of our surroundings.
Whereas the Utop Series deals with the suggestion of space and direction and their impact on the spectator, the ‘b.ond-series’ is a paragon of the interplay between the form of a work of art, the space we grant it and how this interaction influences our lives as viewers. These sculptures are handcrafted and own a direct tactility to their conception. These polymorph sculptures are rolled out of a boiling brew, conceived by hand and in the moment through twisting and turning. These long curly swirls of matter look as if they winded up in the space at hand and transcended their creator, appearing to have been produced rather in and by the situation at hand. Since they are made of a flexible material they can be remodelled to any given situation and space. Their density however allows them to be enlarged. Their versatile character lies in their shape, as well as in the way they are handled and placed. Intended to be enlarged, they can be genealogically tracked by lineage to their original mould. They beautifully reflect the industrial approach recurring in Segers’ oeuvre.
Timothy Segers’ work came first to the attention of the international art world in 2015 in the group exhibition of the GAB, selected Belgian abstraction, curated by Luc Tuymans for Parasol unit Foundation in London which later travelled to Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, M HKA.
Reference text
The utop displays a marker that identifies the properties of an object.Before I started with the Utops, I started to fold paper boxes as research, with the tops covered in black spots.The utop gives a mark to the properties of an object. This twist translates a drawn element outside its frame. The artwork supports the ability to turn around it and flip it into the direction in which the shape of the object is fully experienced. By making any situation a black canvas for the intent of the beholder. Before the Utops I started with folding up paper boxes with the top covered in black marks.
Artist Archive, Sequence of cube in motion 2003
Timothy Segers
M HKA , 2016, Utop 3D nr. 2,
powdercoated stainless steel
475 x 200 x 180 cm
“An artwork is not finished if it’s hanging on a hook. Take it, express yourself through it, do something with it. Art is a language you can play with. It offers suggestions.”
Article by Frank Heirman about Timothy Segers in GvA, 2016
Utop and the symbolicale value in the turn of the hand is a movement that brings together the source of our interaction. The way we turn a suggestion to make our point is as we make a mark. This hidden methode is within every act, every painting, word, object to which we connect a symbolic understanding.
By working with perspective in this way, the utopes were created.
The series is constantly evolving on how we create direction and space more efficiently. The wonder of this experience moves away from this first position and from our anthropcentric view. When we and our way of acting surpass nature’s foundation in our path.
In this way the first steps towards this directing object are applied to the wide world and seek mastery over objects. Placing the objects as a sublime experience that ties into the Anthropocene and a level of civilization that is still a magical experience for us..
“Timothy Segers is fully aware of the Western roots and values that underpin the education that shaped him. He acknowledges the drive towards development inherent in Western culture. He neither condone nor criticizes it, and chooses instead to work with these forces, subtly altering their course.“
Kate Mayne, 2017
Timothy Segers
M HKA , 2016, Utop 3D nr. 2,
powdercoated stainless steel
475 x 200 x 180 cm
[Timothy Segers ] How we formed the shape and flow of matter has usually been an unconscious act. It is in refining an equipollent action that we create a measure. A measure that defines us by the consequences of how we have made an impact.
This rather unique focus of Segers to create artworks as a means of expression and a sign of our time. Because the concept of an artwork is quickly disappearing when it goes through the many curatorial styles and it gets integrated into our personal lives and preferences. We soon lose the concept like a dead language. For Segers, this contemporary position of the artwork determines a different level in which the artist influences.
The objects that he creates embody a timeliness, which holds on to the applicable nature of the abstract. For individual experience and the collective unconscious, we are moving towards the benifit of the next infinity
Ref to the eccentric prints and the evolution of the chinese language from the yijing, explains how we have evolved ourselves in the using of the language and how very recently our position to this origine has now completely changed. The understanding of a repositionable object, as the sculptures of Segers focuss on our abbility. On the maner we make an effect in our surrounding. It is in the making concious of how we place and handle an object in our world that we become aware of its impact.
“His skilfully produced art pieces find endless possibilities for they can be limitlessly moved and/or re-attached. In this manner, the artist encourages a new form of dialogue between the spectator and the work of art in an ever evolving context.”
Random notes, Gretta Welsh, 2020
When I was assisting an artist, my eye stumbled on a meter high collom lying in the midst of some other collected personal values under a side table of his office. It was a Brancussi. He pulled and lifted the piece onto the table. He got it when he traveled to meet his studio when he was about my age.
I imagined the train journey home to Germany, with a ignited wunder and fire holding the large handled form that so easily and naturally travelled the room as it once would have made the voyage in the young man’s hands. It is a knowledge understanding of how things move and how we move it. Our interpretation of these moments translates to the sense of our interaction. In this time I learned I started on a path to translate this understanding. Of how you pass on this value for matter and people.
Bottom parts of endless columns I to III in the study, autumn 1933 Gelatin silver print, 17.9 x 12.9 cm Center Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art, © Sucesión Brancusi – All rights reserved, VEGAP, Málaga, 2018