Artist Profile | Sculpture

Stefaan De Croock

Stefaan De Croock (1982) is a Belgian contemporary artist. After earning a master's degree in fine arts at Sint-Lucas in Ghent, he became a full-time artist in 2011, pushing boundaries ever since. His work is recognized and acclaimed in galleries worldwide - from Miami, Montreal and Mexico City to Stockholm and Bangkok. At the core of De Croock's work is the essence of time and the exploration of life's transience. He employs materials with symbolic meaning, such as weathered wood, ancient marble, resilient steel and fragile ceramics. In his quest for artistic meaning, the artist reconfigures primal matter into a broad spectrum of unique portraits. Through these portraits, he re-examines the paradox of what it means to be human. What makes us unique and different, yet equal and alike at the same time? Life and time shape us all through personal experiences and the stories we construct to remember them. This process inevitably leaves scars, which De Croock finds beautiful, recognizing them as integral to each person's unique journey toward humanity. The natural aesthetic imprint of the used material reflects and represents the intrinsic and unique history of all that is. This visual result of a slow process harmoniously blends with the figurative reference to the human state of mind and emotion, forming a metaphor for the different personal stories that shape us. As De Croock states, "The materials hold something magical. They possess a certain spontaneity, impossible to recreate. They show an amazing imprint of everything that ever happened to them. You can 'see' time. It’s a privilege to be able to use it.” De Croock's art work is a poetic reflection on human experience and the perpetual passage of time. The artist grants these objects a return to the human timeline, connecting their past with a new future, location and purpose for all of us to contemplate and reflect on.