Riki Mijling

de Antoon Melissen, Riki Mijling, Eugen Gomringer, Peter Lodermeyer

Dutch sculptor Riki Mijling (1954, Nijmegen, The Netherlands) works in a rich tradition of non-objective, post-minimalist sculpture. With her sculpture--and her works on paper, too--Mijling expands on the rich tradition of essentialism, developing a characteristic and unique visual language. Mijling pairs a reductionist approach with a warm, "charged" character of her sculptures in waxed steel, Cor-Ten steel, glass and stone. It distinguishes Mijling from so many contemporaries and admired forerunners, and raises the question whether the concept of "minimalism" is, in Mijling's case, still applicable. The non-referential, archetypical forms of Riki Mijling's sculptures lead back to basic elements, to universal significance of timeless forms. Unmistakably "Mijling" is a quest for an ideal line, for pure form, and a new experience of space, of the balance between matter and non-matter.