Stockmans, Piet (BE)

Voornaam: 
Piet
Voorletters: 
P.
Achternaam: 
Stockmans (BE)
Geboortejaar: 
1940
Geboorteplaats: 
Leopoldsburg
Geboorteland: 
België
Werkperiode: 
1966
CV: 

Piet (Pieter) Stockmans is geboren te Leopoldsburg (BE) op 26 januari 1940. Hij volgt de opleiding beeldhouwen en keramiek aan de Provinciaal Hoger Instituut voor Kunstonderwijs te Hasselt. Hij studeert hier af in 1963. In 1966 studeert hij vervolgens af als modeleerder aan de Staatliche Höhere Fachschule für Porzellan in Selb (DE). Nog in hetzelfde jaar wordt hij aangenomen als free- lance ontwerper bij de Porselein- en Tegelfabrieken Mosa B.V. te Maastricht. En drie jaar later wordt hij docent product ontwikkeling aan het Gemeentelijk Hogere Instituut voor Visuele Communicatie en Ontwerp te Genk. Stockmans woont en werkt in Genk (BE). Stockmans is beeldhouwer, keramist, industrieel ontwerper en installatiekunstenaar.

In English

Piet Stockmans occupies a special position, since he is also very active as an industrial designer. Although he would only begin to play an important role in ceramics later, he has been able to follow the developments within ceramic art closely from the early sixties on. He is the only industrial designer in Flanders along with Vic Goyvaerts (Arabia, Finland). During his 26 years at Mosa, he has designed more than 150 different pieces in china. Before 1969 and after 1983, he regularly designed household china and, in between these two dates, he produced hotel china. In 1967, he designed the stackable cup 'Sonja' (1967) of which 30 million pieces have been produced, while in the meantime he also designed the most ingenious sets and services for hotels and institutions. What interested him the most however, was designing products for the disabled. His decoration-free white objects seem cool and businesslike. Yet, designs such as his multi-functional 'Passe-partout' services and his breadboard, which enables the disabled to butter and cut bread with one hand, prove that creativity can triumph, even when designing industrial products. It was extremely important that these designs suited the market, were functional and reasonably priced, could be manufactured and matched the company's existing collections. This was in fact the reason why Piet Stockmans started his own design activities in 1987 under the name Studio Pieter Stockmans (independent of his contract with Mosa) and finally left Mosa in 1989. He felt that as a designer, he was to dependent on other factors and moreover that he had insufficient control over the composition of the collection. Together with Henk Dressens, he then started his own factory in Genk which employed 35 people all trained by himself. In January 1992 however, technical and financial reasons forced the NV Pieter Stockmans Products to close its doors. During that period, the very successful and highly refined service series "Expression" (1991) was put on the market and since the closure of the factory, is being produced in Weimar (DE) and sold by the Dutch company Indoor B.V.. This company also sells other designs by Stockmans, such as the 'Modus vivendi' service.

Stockmans is regularly invited as a guest lecturer at home and abroad to discuss his work and on each occasion, he repeatedly states how much he considers his industrial work as being a heavy intellectual process, one of continuously re-evaluating the rules imposed ... while his free work always comes as a relief in which emotion, sensitivity and the tactile can be given free reign. "My industrial work is produced by my head, my free work stems from my body" is one of the well-known statements he continues to repeat during his lectures. Although he has been making free work from the very beginning, we had to wait till the end of the seventies before he really came into his own as an artist. Since his participation in the summer exhibition "Young Ceramists, Belgium 1980" at the Meeting Centre Scharpoord in Knokke-Heist, exhibitions have followed one another at an increasing pace. 1980 was also the year in which he bought his new oven, allowing him to experiment at his own workshop. "One can indeed speak of a whole revolution that is still going on. The exhibition in Hasselt was a climax in this process. Until the very last day, I was producing work and removing older pieces and this resulted in an exhibition of the production of only one year. And what a year it was!". We can therefore rightfully say that his breakthrough occurred in 1981 during the exhibition in the Provincial Museum of Hasselt, with the furniture producer ARTIFORT in Maastricht (the Netherlands) and in Genevilliers (France) where his first spatial installations were put on display. In 1983, he participated in the 17th biennial in Sao Paulo (Brazil). In October 1985, he was invited along with Frank Steyaert and eight other famous ceramists from abroad to participate in the large exhibition "Dragon Stone" at "The Art Gallery at Harbourfront" in Toronto (Canada) during the 4th "International Ceramics Symposium". The artists on display there were considered by all to be the "leading edge" of the international ceramics scene of that time. All participants shared a capacity for being daringly expressive and highly individual in their use of the medium clay. Stockmans' four large wall installations and a floor installation created an impressive feeling of spaciousness. Because of the fresh, innovative and even revolutionary nature of these installations, Piet Stockmans was considered the odd man out at the exhibition. In 1986, shortly after taking part in Toronto - which was an important step towards international recognition - he was asked to do his first retrospective at the Museum for Decorative Arts in Ghent. Ever since, the interest for his oeuvre seems to have become limitless. In 1988, he was awarded the 'Staatsprijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap voor de Beeldende Kunsten' (State prize of the Flemish Community for the Plastic Arts). Stockmans' exhibition with Johan Van Loon and Jan Van der Vaart in 1991 at the famous Municipal Museum of Amsterdam, was also a milestone in his career. Moreover, several large museums in Belgium and the Netherlands started buying his work and he has been asked by some clients to integrate his ceramics into pieces of architecture. And as if that wasn't enough, he was also appointed Cultural Ambassador of Flanders in 1995.

At first, Piet Stockmans did not produce large-scale works. In fact, he first began by putting the rational dimension of indus- trial production into question in rendering cups unusable by changing them slightly, for example. Only later (by the end of the seventies), did he start to revolt against the impersonal aspect of repetition in floor and wall installations, it being the conditio sine qua non in industry where the object designed must be suited for mass-production.

In certain works, the step taken from industrial to free work is more than evident. Examples are his series of vases dating from 1980 of which Stockmans made variants in 1987 and 1994. These were produced industrially and were intended as serial products (and therefore were also stamped). But because of the manual changes carried out during manufacture, the work also has a strong personal character.
There are indeed links between his industrial work on the one hand and his independent work on the other. There is his preference for pure china, something he had learned to master as no one else during his training courses and experiments at Mosa. "It could be any material whatsoever as far as I'm concerned, but it so happens that my greatest skill is in ceramics.

So I do not see the use of turning to other materials. My schooling plays a role here, my links with the industrial and my knowledge of the materials which results in an almost physical relationship with my work. (...) I would turn to another material immediately if I were suddenly to realise that what I want to make is no longer feasible in china". Piet Stockmans casts practically everything himself (the last few years he is helped by his assistant) and he gradually bakes it at 1410°C. He colours his pieces with industrial china glazes to which, at times, he adds some colour. He is the only one of his generation (1965-1980) who has been so consequent in his use of china. At a later stage, people like Tjok Dessauvage (°1948), Patrick Picarelle (°1952), Erna Verlinden (°1953), Anne Mortier (°1956) and Mieke Everaet (°1963) would follow in his footsteps. Contrary to some of them, the china in Stockmans' oeuvre has always been subordinate to its concept.
A second allusion to his industrial production in his free work is the emphatic presence of the serial aspect of manufacturing: the continuously recurring principle of quantity and repetition to which he so relentlessly opposed himself. From the eighties on, his china installations with their thousands of randomly arranged small dishes are all identical in form and still so different because of his subtle use of mainly blue colour glazes and powder and he removed each one from its plaster moulding by hand.
The effort involved in these numerous ritual unpackings and rhythmical set-ups is comforting to Stockmans. Later on - also because of the difficulties at his factory - this physical aspect became even stronger until he finally and almost aggressively rejected the functional by cutting, bending, painting, perforating and breaking the work. Since 1987, Piet Stockmans has also been producing multiples which he sells in wooden boxes "to give the visitors to my exhibitions an opportunity to go home with a souvenir of an emotional experience".
Today, his installations consist of objects which do not always allude to utilities which he places or has emerging from boxes filled with straw. This change has come about organically. The boxes have always existed, but originally they only served to transport objects. In these installations, the objects are at the most only partly removed from their boxes which are now an integral part of the installation. Unpacking and storing the wrappings is no longer necessary, therefore. In the last four years, these objects have become masks: casts of his own face.

His two branches of activity should therefore not be considered as being separate, but rather as being the result of an interesting dialogue between the industrial designer and the artist, who are both brought together in one person. On the one hand, we have the industrial designer who works according to the rules imposed by industry, on the other we have the artist who reacts against this and renders useful items dysfunctional through his actions. The strong conceptual, ritual and repetitive nature of his free work also evokes associations with visual artists such as Richard Long and Donald Judd and with composers of music such as Richard Reich and Philip Glass.

Finally, we can only confirm what Jaak Fontier already wrote some time ago: "The subtle palette of colour, tactility and luminosity which the china has been given, the intelligent way the installations are integrated into the atmosphere and light of a given space and, last but not least, the many-sided ideal relationships which are brought about by Stockmans' vision, lift his work to the level of the very best that is produced in this artistic field in the Western world".

In: Ceramic Art in Flanders from the eighties on or the decline of figural sculpture by Inge Vranken
http://zuper.com/portfolio/vizodka/texts/ceramic.html

Werk: 

Signatures: Piet Stockmans + date = unica; Pieter Stockmans = limited edition; Pieter Stockmans + sticker + large edition.

Bron foto: 

Portrait in black and white (photographer Ann-Katrien Van De Velde); portrait in color (source website she.be); set of bowls (studio Pieter Stockmans).