John Isaacs

John Isaacs (born 1968 in Lancaster, England) lives and works in Berlin. His training as a specialist in evolutionary biology has left him with a strong taste for exploring and understanding the mysteries of human existence. John Isaacs made a name for himself in the 1990s with his hyperrealistic wax sculptures of human bodies that have become shapeless, fat and repulsive masses, sometimes creating discomfort or anxiety. Having an aversion to repetition, the artist does not lock himself into one style. Like an autodidact who learns by doing, he tries his hand at a variety of materials and techniques, from ceramics to neon, from bronze or marble sculpture to photography. The titles of the works hold an important place in his practice. They can be ambiguous phrases that question the viewer about what he is seeing and the reality that surrounds him, and sometimes the same title is used for several works, which then integrate the same "emotional landscape". The notion of emotion comes up again and again in his speech about his work, where a dialectic between mind and body, cerebral and visceral, is played out.