The work of Jurriaan Lowensteyn manifests itself within a discursive landscape in which explanation structurally falls short. His practice cannot be understood as a coherent methodology, but as a series of parallel shifts in which material, light, and space mutually unsettle one another.
The use of wood, water, glass, metal, and pigment functions neither as a formal language nor as metaphor, but as an operational condition. Light—frequently reduced to directed lasers and reflective interventions—behaves as an unstable factor that activates perception without consolidating it. What becomes visible refuses to carry meaning; what suggests meaning withdraws from fixation.
Silhouettes, cut-outs, and negative volumes are not carriers of content, but strategies of withdrawal. The body appears, at most, as a structural absence, as a site where interpretation comes to a halt. The viewer is thus not addressed, but quietly implicated.
A prolonged proximity to the artistic practice of Ulay—not as reference but as daily reality—has left behind a sharp awareness of art as a life practice rather than as the production of meaning. This does not constitute an explanation, merely a context that is itself no more conclusive.
Lowensteyn’s work refuses clarification. It does not function in order to be understood, but in order to be present.