KUNSTENAARS / ARTISTS
_________________
Hans Theys
Happy and Clear Thinking and Carving
Cutting, Sawing, Drilling, Modeling, Casting, Forging, Welding
and Blasting with Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brâncuși, Pendejo Panamarenko, Bernd Lohaus and Joost Pauwaert
Why are Joost Pauwaert’s collided cannonballs a special sculpture?
Panamarenko did not see himself as a sculptor. His works were called ‘devices’, to distinguish them from non-contemporary sculptures. This reminds us of Leonardo da Vinci, who liked to emphasize the mental nature of the work of art, to distinguish himself from craftsmen, and rightly so. But not for the reasons you might expect. What connects Leonardo da Vinci and Panamarenko is not that they made ‘devices’, but that almost everything they made emerged from a series of activities that, strictly speaking, could be called non-artistic. They saw no boundaries between supposedly separate fields such as love, empathy, art, politics, poetry, literature, mechanics, knowledge of materials, warcraft, cinema, biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and so on.
Nothing is more miraculous than the development of a body from a fertilized egg cell, because the DNA contained in the cell does not contain a building plan. The laws that determine the final shape of the body are largely mechanical and chemical. Underlying this mechanical world we find mathematical relationships and laws, numbers, gravity, energy, electricity. The origin of the first stars, the origin of the first chemical elements, the origin of carbon, the origin of life, the origin of many life forms: everything sings of proportions, imbalances, temporary equilibria, growth, development, decay. The world is a song, and our brain sings along, our senses sing along, our body sings along, our hands sing and our feet.
As an aesthetic, mannerist variant of long-established forms, the art world is a dead, sad world. But as a sanctuary for people who think with color and rhythm, materials and techniques, clay and history, iron and mechanics, politics and poetry; as a sanctuary for the few people who really act freely (in accordance with their nature, without being burdened by expectations of others); as a sanctuary, the art world is a breeding ground for new observations, experiences, attitudes, behavior, ideas, images and stories.
There is no fundamental difference between the occupation of free-acting artists, scientists and thinkers: they formulate images that sometimes strengthen our grip on the world, and they arrive at those images with an observing, thinking and acting body, from an original intuition and experience, with methods that differ from the usual.
The work of artists who move me arises from a practiced handling of things and a persistent attitude to life, which is inseparable from the work. Panamarenko’s work emerged from alternative approaches to classical engineering challenges; Ronald Ophuis’ paintings arise from his moral and political involvement with injustice, abuse and suffering; Max Pinckers’ photos and books arise from a cosmopolitan-humanist perspective on world events and the role of the photographer; Jonas Van der Haegen’s photos form a radical, public celebration of homosexuality, still overshadowed by isolation and loneliness; Simon Masschelein’s work emerges from the joyful depth of the endlessly explorable craft; the work of Ermias Kifleyesus arises from his exile, a sense of oral history and the dream of building palaces from waste; Luc Deleu investigates the possibility of livable places for a freely acting individual in a structured, architectural environment; the typographer Guy Rombouts developed a color and shape alphabet as a form generator with which a new world can be created; Berlinde De Bruyckere’s work arises from a sense of connection with the ongoing growth and decay of the world; Elly Strik’s work flows from a concern with the back of the face and a confidence in repeated movement; Laurence Petrone gives shape to an embodied thinking that outwits the hypertrophy of historical consciousness; Victoria Parvanova acts from a radical bimbo feminism grafted upon an Eastern European view on the western mediatic and commercial circus with all its joy and wonder; Joost Pauwaert’s work is driven by an excited curiosity and confidence in the meeting between dream images, history and all possible crafts. Everything these people make is permeated with tenderness.
Sculptures are created by removing or adding matter, by cutting away or modeling, unraveling or stringing together. You can sculpt with clay, marble, steel, bronze, pollen, dust, emptiness, movement, air, light, sound and silence. In March 1910, Rodin spoke of ‘le passage du trou à la bosse... à l’aide d’une ligne générale’. In 1953, Henry Moore translated this as ‘the science of the hollow and the bump’, but he adds that in addition to dents, real holes are also needed to show the depth of the sculpture and its relationship to the landscape. Brâncuși’s endless column is created by cutting as deep as possible into a beam without breaking it. A minimal intervention, true to the material. The space cut away fills itself again in an optical illusion that restores the beam. Similarly, Giacometti’s minimal angelfish-shaped heads swell into round heads when we look ‘off focus’. When Bernd Lohaus places two lying beams on top of each other, an intermediate space is created that becomes a third form. When Luc Deleu lies three gradually growing, overhanging block towers next to each other, a ‘negative’ architectural space is created that you cannot foresee, imagine or draw. This is also the case when Joost Pauwaert makes two cannonballs collide and expand. A negative form is created: the apparently removed mass. At the same time (just like Lohaus’s beams inscribed with chalk), attention is drawn to the landscape-like surface of the balls, smoother on the convex side; rubbed, ribbed, torn, twisted, almost liquid on the flat side. And this with one tap of the blacksmith’s hammer, one tip of the soldering iron, one swipe of the thumb, one incision with the chisel, one carefully prepared, perfectly timed event.
Montagne de Miel, 29 February 2024