Bronze Masks

Some of the most interesting figures which inspire this travel among abstractions, between the photographic representations and the symmetrical portraits, are the bronze sculptures. Their patinas containing already a lot of abstractions.

This is an outline of this trip between the figures : the sculpture représents an allerical character; the patina inscribes unpredictable designs on the surface of the metal; the photograph recomposes textures and shades in abstract motifs; and finally, the rotations, reframings, symmetrisations achieve the overturning of the figuration.

I set my look on a few monuments in Brussels an Antwerp, trying to see in them the hidden trolls. Of course, I had to content myself with the bronzes whose patina is not wasted by the anti-tag polish.

L'Homme au Vase, square de Meeus, by Jean Herain (1910).

Le Dompteur de Chevaux, by Thomas Vinçotte (1885).

Le Mât Electrique, or Combat de Tigres et de Serpents, by Jacques de Lalaing (1913).

Le Destin, square Léon Jacquet in Ixelles, by Henri Boncquet (1901).

TheMonument à Antoine Wiertz, place Blijkaerts, by Jacques Jacquet (1880).

Brabo Fountain, Antwerp, by Jef Lambeaux (1887).

Anspach fountain, Allégorie de la Magistrature Communale by Julien Dillens (1897).

Anspach fountain, the Chimères by Godefroid Devreese (1897).

In the Botanical Gardens :

Le Vautour, by Alfred Crick.
L'Aigle, by Henri Boncquet, 1894.
Le Souci, by Maurice De Mathelin.
Les Quatre Ages, by Jules Lagae (1898).
Les Quatre Eléments, by Paul Dubois.
Le Buis, by Gustave Van Hove.
Le Chèvrefeuille, by Eugène De Pleyn.
La Panthère, by Jean-Marie Gaspar.
Le Chardon, by Frans Joris, 1897.
La Cigogne, by Edmond Lefever, 1896.
Le Laurier, by Julien Dillens (1898).
Le Palmier ou le Martyr, by Victor De Haen.

The apparition of a face did erase a great deal of the perceptions of the original figure and did upset the interplay of lines and colours, but it dis not completely obliterate them. On the contrary maybe, the pleasure of coloured forms is heightened by its tension with figuration.

A new aspect of this reflection is presented in a series built from images of the Provinces, sculptures above and around the arcades of the Cionquantenaire in Brussels.