End of an Era, 2024.

Steel & plastic.

Work in progress.

A five-meter-high statue of a punk turning his back to the audience, ominously glancing over his shoulder. He is carrying an Aldi bag.

As a sort of anti-hero version of the statue of David, this sculpture serves as an allegory for the subculture and the movement that exists in the fringes of the art world.

It’s an interesting challenge to create a monumental artwork and to play with the physical presence of the piece in the space, along with the historical implications of power that typically come with a statue.

This piece is inspired by a painting by Daniel Richter, Lonely Old Slogans, which I saw at the GEM museum in The Hague in 2008. I’ve been working on this artwork for months, and only now does this memory resurface. I remember it made a huge impression on me because I didn’t expect to find the symbols of my subculture in a museum: it was as if these two worlds were miles apart, but that painting suddenly built a bridge between them.