Tim Mathijsen (The Netherlands, 1987), living and working in Amsterdam, has developed a sculptural practice that explores how understanding takes shape, transforms, and evolves into meaning, knowledge, and narrative. His work is defined by a fascination with transformation and reinterpretation, often engaging with the tension between form, function, and context.

Plaster plays a central role in Mathijsen’s practice, chosen for its adaptability and dual nature: both a material that can fix solid forms over time and a medium through which existing designs can be borrowed, copied, and repurposed. By reissuing elements of architecture and interior design within entirely new contexts, Mathijsen highlights the fluidity of meaning. In this process, objects are stripped of their original use and significance, opening up the possibility for new interpretations. This gesture resonates with Georges Bataille’s notion of “making abundance,” in which usefulness is sacrificed to create space for a new conceptual reality.

His practice often engages with the act of copying, re-contextualizing forms in ways that underscore their instability. Recently, Mathijsen turned to a personal archive: comic strips illustrated by his grandfather. By tracing and regrouping these drawings, boats, portraits, figures in motion, he assembled new compositions that resist chronology, instead guided by type and repetition. Some of these images were transposed into frescoes on handkerchiefs, extending his interest in material and narrative transformation.

Mathijsen studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam before joining De Ateliers (2015). In 2019 he was a resident at WIELS in Brussels, where he later presented a solo exhibition in the project space (2022). Alongside his individual practice, he is cofounder of Marwan, a collective artist-run project space in Amsterdam, and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.