Dirk Koolmees: The Geometry of Motion

Picture of Dirk Koolmees in his shed at the back of his house in Vientiane, Lao PDR, where he spends his time listening to music and chiseling, filing, sanding. Photo credit: Bart Verweij.

In Dirk Koolmees’ hands, wood becomes a study in rhythm and restraint. His sculptures, carved with patience and precision, reveal fluid geometries that seem to shift with the light; forms that evoke the quiet mathematics of nature and the movement of living things. Each curve and hollow is a gesture, an invitation to see motion suspended in stillness.

Some of Dirk Koolmees’s sculptures on view at Lao Art Week, Vientiane, 2024.

A self-taught sculptor rooted in tradition, Koolmees works much as his father once did: with chisels, files, and intuition. Yet his vision is unmistakably contemporary; an evolution of craftsmanship into abstraction, where the grain of the wood guides both idea and form.

His work has travelled far beyond his studio, exhibited in galleries and hotels across North America, the Caribbean, and Asia, from Kingston’s Olympia Gallery and National Gallery to Vientiane’s T’shop Lai Gallery and Amari Hotel. Each piece, whether displayed in public or held in private collections, speaks of lineage, discipline, and the enduring conversation between the hand and the material.