GALERIE GHISLAINE HUSSENOT The first thing individual noticed.

GALERIE GHISLAINE HUSSENOT

The first thing individual noticed, when looking at the four cuts that make up this exhibition, was a radical modification of the regular gallery space: Didier Vermeiren chose to possess only the ground level, leaving the mezzanine to function as a belvedere. It was, however, alone a virtual modification, in that nothing was actually changed in the architecture of the place; the site took onward the general disposition of the works--like chesspieces, they defined the area they occupied and continually submitted it to a modern and specific perception. (The floor, for example, with its usually unnoticeable oblique direction here constituted a primary given.)

The vicinity of three untitled sculptures, conceived as variations forward the theme of a 1985 work by the agency of Vermeiren--a vertical parallelipiped of around 1 meter 65 centimeters high, placed onward four castors, a model that has undergone numerous transformations--immediately made it clear that this rife piece is about relationships and about dynamics. Placed along united of the rooms' diagonals were three "carts," which gave the space an air of potential motion. The first and the third, one as well as the other from 1992, were identical--a metal armature serv as base for the pieces, which were misfortuneed diagonally by a strip of plaster, flat on one side, rough and ragged on the other--but oriented in as it was a way as to subvert the faces of this white panel that functioned as an internal division. The secondary "cart," sitting between the other sum of two units as if in quotation marks, repeated the 1985 archetype except that it was fixed to the floor with four black strap fasteners cohereed to its wheels. Here again the theme of change was dealt with as chisel has always treated mobility--simultaneously a highest ambition and a curse, as is bring reproached in the Ancient Greek practice of tying down the statues of gods

The fourth and largest work in the display was very different from the others, on the other hand also emphasized the singular and cunning bond reflected in the history of Vermeiren's have a title to art. L'Appel aux armes (The call to arms, 1992) takes its title from a plastic art by Rodin, cast in brown color in 1870, then made in enlarged form in plaster in 1912 It is the pedestal of that enlarged piece, which can be seen today at the Musee Rodin in Meudon, that Vermeiren (after having meticulously measured it) generates in plaster, according to a principal that he invariably notices which consists of rendering the pedestals of statues in the same material as that of the works they support--a totally personal version, as it were, of the absorption of statuary into its pedestal so oftentimes touted as one of the dominant characteristics of present art. Vermeiren often borrows in this way from Rodin, yet also from Canova and David Smith. forward top of this image of the pedestal, which in technical denominations is called a "positive," is placed, back-to-front, an proper state of the same shape, on the other hand inverted: the "negative." A temporal reversal that takes the proces backwards and places the "before" forward top of the "after." Double-dealing time, in the faculty of perception of an account of the fabrication of the piece before our inspections That Vermeiren, like Constantin Brancusi, is a passionate photographer, and that the practice of photography informs his work as a sculptor, should not approach as a surprise.

...

Home