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Jan Koen Lomans: Nocturnal Dream,Tapestry
Photo: Alexander Louzada

JAN KOEN LOMANS

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In the series of tapestries titled Nocturne, artist Jan Koen Lomans manages to capture transience in a subtle and poetic fashion. Like a musical nocturne, he uses fabric to paint a dreamscape of abstract flowers, where the contours of the composition slowly appear in the dim deep blue light of the night. Two of these textile art pieces are on show at Masterly - the Dutch in Milano during the Salone del Mobile 2017.

Posted 24 April 2017

Since graduating, in 2006, Lomans continuous working on researching and transforming (textile) materials. Finds and translates are his leitmotif; transformation and the cycles; the course of nature.
Now Lomans is working more than ten years on collaborating with the TextielLab Textile Museum, in Tilburg, the Netherland,  where he does research in almost all departments and realised new work. From wall hangings to tufted installations

Jan Koen Lomans: Nocturnal Dream
Photo: Alexander Louzada

Nocturnal dream painted in fabric
The abstracted floral motifs of these nocturnal pieces appear to fit in seamlessly with the atmosphere and history of the 17th century Palazzo Francesco Turati, the Dutch Pavilion of the Salone del Mobile. Elegantly wilting flowers are given eternal life here in a unique blue tapestry of 2.40 by 1.60 meters, which virtually no longer looks like textile. In each piece of art five layers of mohair are worked into one blue polyester thread which lets the floral lines light up in any shimmer. Nocturne submerges the visitor in a tranquilizing midnight blue dream.
 
From an early age Jan Koen Lomans has been fascinated by the various stages of nature, such as birth, rebirth, transition and transience. He depicts this theme in a range of ways, by making it tangible in installations, where often textile is the chosen medium to create the desired result.
 
This is how in the Nocturne series he captures the period between sleeping and waking and the transience and wilting of amaryllis or lilies in various stages of dying, as if he has lifted the abstracted nature from a Vanitas painting.
 

Jan Koen Lomans: 'Well Made' In Praise of the creative process, tentoonstelling Kunsthal KAdE Amersfoort. Foto Mike Bink

Jan Koen Lomans: Melted structures

Jan Koen Lomans: Melted Structures

Jan Koen Lomans: Melted Structures

Jan Koen Lomans: Cosmic garden

In order to transform ideas into artwork, research and collaboration with craftsmen, artists and scientists are crucial to the artist. The organic investigation often leads Lomans to new production techniques. His curious interest in synchronicity, the meaning of coincidence, is expressed in this. Merely a part of the process is controlled, the rest remains uncertain. Coincidence he sees as a surprising adventure; it always results in something unexpected.
 
Transitory Landscape, his double sided, tufted installation in collaboration with the TextielLab is an excellent example of this. The same applies to the intriguing Cosmic Garden by Lomans and artist Marc Mulders, exhibited at the Kazerne during the Dutch Design Week 2016. The Mandala style installation depicts the cosmic cycle and is constructed from stained glass by Mulders and round glass objects by Lomans, where he fuses glass and textiles. The extraordinary outcome, to which Lomans dedicated a year and a half of research, is reminiscent of cosmic galaxies and planets.
 
This method is controllable for eighty per cent, leaving the rest up to fate. 

Cosmic garden
by Lomans and artist Marc Mulders, Kazerne Eindhoven

Jan Koen Lomans fusing

Cosmic garden
by Lomans and artist Marc Mulders, Kazerne Eindhoven

Lomans does something nobody else in The Netherlands does. For the series Mindful Cloud he worked with an enormous laser machine, the GraphixScan 1800 from the University of Wales, enabling him to create ‘melting structures’ with very large surfaces. His drawings of floral close-ups are scanned first and then developed into a vector file. The laser burns into the polyester fabrics at high speed with a destructive force, layer upon layer. The melting fabric, with surprisingly organic structures, is like a new skin and results in a layered and almost fragile piece of art, a mesh as delicate as a spider’s web.
 
 
Fusing glass and textile Lomans was for a long time fascinated by the opposite character of the materials glass and textiles. In 2015, he started with a research to the two materials together. This resulted in the cooperation project the ' cosmic garden ' with Marc Mulders.
 
Jan Koen Lomans
Jan Koen Lomans (Rotterdam, 1978) studied at the Academy of Arts St. Joost in Breda and Den Bosch and graduated in 2006 in textile tapestry. He lives and works in Utrecht.
The Central Museum has recently acquired the first three tapestries from the Nocturne series for their collection. Work by Lomans has previously been exhibited by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Centraal Museum, KAdE Amersfoort and Museum Oud Amelisweerd, amongst others. His artworks are created on commission or acquired by governmental departments, companies, collectors and private individuals, nationally and internationally.
 
For more information:
mail@jankoenlomans.com
www.jankoenlomans.com

Text and interview: Viveka van de vliet
Translation: Lee Rammelt 

Click here to download the file "How_we_work-_Studio_JKL-_Melted_structures.pdf".
Click here to download the file "How_we_Work-studio_JKL_on_tufting-1.pdf".
Click here to download the file "How_we_work-studio_JKL_on_weaving_.pdf".
Click here to download the file "Cosmic_Garden_making_of.pdf".
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