CHINA CERAMIC NET
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TECHNICAL STATEMENT

  Dejonghe's forms are simple, modular and repetitive, and they often constitute a set of samples destined to gauge variations and record differences and changes.
    His range of colours appears as a succession of monochrome periods: the browns of raw stoneware, the "copper reds", the whites or blacks of his "Frozen Earth", the blues of his stele or his lines, and to day, the range of white that echoes the brilliance of glass. But amidst these monochrome asceticism, the density of fire and the conditions of firing and kilning produce all the subtle variations of colour, tonality and luminosity that penetrate matter.
    For Dejonghe, the matter is always a mineral subjected to fire. clay to begin with, and an age-old art: ceramics; and in the last few years the choice of another favourite material: thick glass with a luminous depth.
    Energy means warmth, fire and flame but also the warmth of light which develops (in the photographic sense of the word) all the metamorphoses of matter subjected to its energy pressure. The result may be this unique association of support and colour that are enameled surfaces, or these accidents where light clings in transparent masses.
    In Dejonghe's relationship to firing, there is all the rigour of a "savoir faire" born of observation, but which integrates the indomitable element of surprise. For him, fire is not a law to respect or a constraint to be mastered, but a marvelous accomplice to converse with.
    Energy is also mechanical, directly linked to consequences of gravity, whether it is a question of setting works into place by aligning them or curving horizontals, suspending them in space, raising them up vertically or any other gesture which, in the sculptor's studio, displaces weight, compacts masses in the confines of moulds, lightens wood into embers, ashes and smoke.
    This in -depth play with energies-fire that transforms, forces that shape and displace masses even on the scale of landscape--intersects with the tradition of the "Arts du Feu" and the problems raised by sculpture in the course of the 20th century.