Biography

Mark Sturkenboom (Driebergen, 1983)

Sturkenboom was formerly a welder before graduating with honors in 2012 at Artez,
Institute for the Arts in Arnhem.
Sturkenboom is trained as a designer, but now acts as an independent artist.
Design is a word that can mean a great deal of different things depending on the time,
place and context that one chooses to view it in.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines design as:
“Purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object”
Perhaps that’s his only tie with design; Sturkenboom creates purposeful, intentional objects. In doing so,
he works together with devoted craftsmen and artisans around the world. His work is part of public and private collections and exhibitions worldwide.

Sturkenboom delivers absolute statements through fierce intention, careful planning, and a purposeful energy that proliferates in his will to express. Throughout all of this he manages to balance a visual cadence between the absurd and a sharp sense of humor.
He welcomes the viewer to casually slip into his conceptual narrative.

Memory is prevalent in his line of work, throughout his entire oeuvre is the ability to preserve a
moment in a state of crystal clarity. Memory is messy, it is flavored by myriad personal influences.
Memory changes, morphing with age and experience,
fading into personal fictions, diluting into deep well of life’s experience.
Sturkenboom works against the entropic process, realizing his ideas with clean lines,
a sensitive palette, careful mechanisms that resist the temptation of clutter and confusion.
He realizes single memories with exacting intention. 

Lets take one example: We, as a culture fear death, and we do our best not to think of it.
Sturkenboom’s work 21 Grams drives us to consider it. But this consideration is faceted,
it contains within it a breadth of sentiments.
More contemplative than it is macabre, more playful than it is perverse.
21 Grams, like a prism,  refracts an emotional muddle into distinct perspectives of personal perspective. 

Lets take another example: We, as a culture, are enamored by objects – perfect forms created in organized environments.
Physical human beauty is always cruel because it will absolutely disappear.
With his Crystallized Overgrown mirrors he illustrates this fading beauty which is subjected to time.

Manufacture is comfortable because it always yields the same result. These are the cruxes of the work of Sturkenboom, he resists manufacture, he embraces material. He weaves together histories, he composites the living memory with the permanence of genuine mediums.
Offering the everlasting object, balanced with the fragility of human experience. 

Text by Adam Grinovich

CV

2024

June
DUO EXHIBITION
WEIRD FISHES
Conelis Schuytstraat
Amsterdam

Februari
SOLO EXHIBITION
BETWEEN A ROCK AND A SOFT PLACE
At StageBregenz with Galerie Philia
Austria

BETWEEN 2020 – 2024

A BUNCH OF EXHIBITIONS
Check my exhibition page
Globally

2020

CORONA PANDEMIC
real real nice, thanks for that

2019

April
Salone del Mobile
Milan

Januari
Viceland; Appearance on Viceland’s Most Expensivest
starring 2Chainz
Los Angeles

2018

December
DesignMiami
icw Gallery All
Miami

March
DesignShanghai
icw Gallery All
Shanghai

March
Here is Now, Long Museum
icw Gallery All
Shanghai

Februari
Collect at Saatchi Gallery
icw Mint London
London

2017

December
DesignMiami
icw Gallery All
Miami

November
The Salon NY
icw Gallery All
New York

October
Hosting ‘Masterglass’
Conceptual glass blowing project with 16 international students.
collaboration with Cathelijne Engelkes
Boda Glassbruk, Sweden

September
Guest-teacher BA & MA, Kønsthogeschole KHIO
Oslo, Norway

May
Group show Extraordinaire
Tools Gallery
Paris, France

March
Design Shanghai
icw Gallery All

2016

November
The Salon NY
icw Gallery All
New York

September
Artist in Residence
The Glass Factory
Boda Glassbruk, Sweden

August
Guest-teacher BA & MA, Kønsthogeschole KHIO
Oslo, Norway

April
Salone del Mobile
Milan

2015

October
Guestteacher  BA, Kønsthogeschole KHIO

April
Presentation at Salone del Mobile
Milan, Italy

2014

OVERGROWN X MIKIMOTO
Commisioned by The Royal Dutch Embassy
of Japan and Mikimoto Gallery.
Curated by Lenn Cox
Tokyo, Japan

Concept and design Mephisto
Commissioned by -and in collaboration with- Ted Noten

Designer for various concepts and objects for 7 Necessities
commissioned by Atelier Ted Noten
In collaboration with Ted Noten, Cathelijne Engelkes,
and Marcel van Kan.

Exterior design for Zuiderzee Museum Geurstation 
In collaboration with Marcel van Kan
commissioned by Atelier Ted Noten.

2013

Production video for Watching Monet by Carlight
concept and idea by Ted Noten

foundation of Atelier Mark Sturkenboom
Utrecht, Netherlands