calendario eventi  :: 

X

11/2/2009

Thomas Lerooy

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Bruxelles

With his sculptures and drawings, Thomas Lerooy poses a number of essential questions regarding historically developed trends within the visual arts. He achieves this through an imaginative play with images which are inspired from, amongst other things, classical sculpture and 17th Century Vanitas style painting, as well as from illustrations in books, anatomical drawings, grotesque pictures , …

The four new bronze sculptures which he presents in the Rodolphe Janssen Gallery create a very intense dialogue in the way that they communicate with each other and with the spectator. Thomas Lerooy has used classical busts from the realms of the sculptural art combined with disproportional torsos. The busts of these wise men emit a self-satisfied conceit, but they are non the less subject to the force of gravity in so much that their skulls are distorted into an amorphous mass. On the other hand, their torsos display a young and platonic handsomeness, although they are totally subjected to the massive stubbornness of the busts they carry. While one torso puts up a heroic but hopeless and ludicrous resistance against its far too heavy bust, another simply dangles languidly by …

The technique used by Thomas Lerooy, i.e. the disproportional enlargement of the head, is a typical trade mark of caricatured humour. However the result he creates, reaches much further than that of a stereotyped joke. In a highly intelligent way he plays with a number of visually contradictory propositions. By applying an almost maniacal solidity in both production and finish, as well as the use of a plinth to emphasize the artistic pretensions of the statue, he places his sculptures within the highest traditions of the sculptural art, while conversely he purposefully undermines other conventions – such as proportion, symmetry and balance. Moreover, in his hands, Thomas Lerooy moulds the monumental tradition of the sculptural art by combining a static portrait pose with captured movement, through which he creates extreme contradiction and grotesque tension. The torsos strive to represent a powerful or elegant posture, however, ultimately their poses become pathetic due to the passiveness of their busts.

By dividing an entity into two different parts which are then reunited, he creates a new entity with its own logic which is alienated from our concept of reality. The image that he develops thus is not just an abstraction full of ridiculous humour, but the creator of a new mental perspective for looking at and experiencing sculptural art. Thomas Lerooy bends the original aura existing around monumental sculptural art, towards a lasting tension with a sense of drama and theatre. The impossibility of the bronze statues to be in movement, both mentally and physically, fills the gallery with a constricted and existentialist aura, and by doing so, confronts the spectators with their own 'condition humaine'.

Starting from an apparently restricted figurative language , Thomas Lerooy creates a universe with endless possibilities. In his drawings and sculptures transitoriness and death are omnipresent. Simultaneously there is an unbelievable liveliness full of bristle like in a better “Danse Macabre”. Puttoes and centaurs with skulls are for example overhearing , laughing a bit at the spectator, posing proudly, having a pee, dancing and colliding against one another, puking … They represent a story of mortality and perpetual decay but they do this in a horribly cheerful manner.

The symbols of death remind the Vanitas painting of the Northern Netherlands (17thcentury) but also the grotesque or macabre humour of for example James Ensor, Félicien Rops and Antoine Wiertz. The skull as a motif by excellence : a powerful symbol for many people, but simultaneously it stands for mystery, the frightening, the similarity (In death we are all equal). Just like James Ensor portraying himself with a skull or Félicien Rops drawing prostitutes who are making love with skeletons and Antoine Wiertz presenting his ‘belle Rosine’ posing vainly next to a skeleton, her likeness without flesh nor skin.

The world Thomas Lerooy is creating in his drawings, originates in a complex network of patterns which are brought together. Not only icons of sculpture (cf. Davidof Michelangelo, Manneken Pis of H. Duquesnoy) or the funeral tradition are reformed but also well-known logos from old advertisements pass in review (cf. Belga, Mère Poularde, …), ornamental elements from architecture and applied arts, pastry architecture, animals, exotic patterns, elements out of party games (card playing, dr. Bibber, game of goose), …Through the highly imaginative links and by representing things upside down he disrupts the meaning of the icons of our civilization and so they become humoristic in a sneering way. Out of one thing wells another thing spontaneously, layer after layer, leading to a mentally labyrinthian entity of meanings and misleadings. Out of these bizarrely monumental compositions , fountains of destruction or apocalyptical caves, entrance gates leading to atrocious atmospheres are created in the way of Dante Aleghieri. All abundantly supplied with skull and rotting fruit. Because of the free and even unrespectful relationship with his iconography his work doesn’t have anything to do with death adoration such as in gothic or deadmetal scenes nor with any moralistic range of thoughts. It is the creation of a new mental space and an investigation into the impact of this allegory, into the actual meaning of art-historical motifs, into the connection between work of art – space – spectator, and into beauty and bad taste.

In his sculptures Thomas Lerooy shows a great fascination for monumental tradition of sculpture and the meaning of ‘the aura’ around art. Style and technique are handled in a perfectionist and mannerist way having an eye for detail and proportion. At the same time his work shows baroque grandeur and vigour. Thomas Lerooy continues tradition in a self-willed way to make monuments demanding respect of the spectator and become an anchorage for their environment. Obviously the strength of his work reaches much further than the consolidation of the honour and glory of god forgotten figures, as it used to be the case in the 19th century. By using symbols of deterioration and mortality he distorts the civil meaning of the monument and provides it with an ironical charge. The figures he is shaping seem to come from another parallel world. Besides a game of attracting and rejecting, they also provoke the spectator’s direct reaction without allowing to be experienced in an unequivocal way. By doing so, Thomas Lerooy creates an area of tension between the sculpture and the surrounding space which from then onwards is experienced as claustrophobic and threatening.

Tanguy Eeckhout 2007

Opening Thursday 12.02.2009 6-9 pm

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen
35 Rue de Livourne - Brussels
Free admission

stampa

permanent link