SCULPTURE WITHOUT PROPERTIES (PAVILION)

The most striking property of sculpture is that sculptures are always about real space as opposed to suggested space, like in painting, for example. As a sculptor, this concrete space is offered to you; it presents itself. For once, I should like in this proposal to create my own space for a sculpture. In 2013, in Hofheide Crematorium, a building by the architects Coussée and Goris, I installed a series of wax reliefs which were fitted into a monumental concrete wall. The reliefs are the expression, in a number of variations, of the unpredictable and fleeting movements of life, and are a contrapuntal response to the building’s overwhelming and symbolically laden appearance.

I wanted to further build on this idea in Sculpture without Properties (Pavilion). The pavilion is a simple, pentagonal construction with two openings that are not shut off: a narrow opening in the ceiling and an opening in the form of a door in one of the side walls. Inside, you enter into a room-sized space incorporating two sculptural elements. The back wall of the pentagonal space is a 400 cm-high and 247 cm-wide bronze relief, and opposite this is an irregular but geometrically-shaped white 50cm-high marble block. Above the relief is the opening in the ceiling through which zenithal light illuminates the movements depicted in the relief. In the corner of one of the side walls is the door opening that gives access to the space and through which the light falls obliquely onto the marble monolith.