Texts

Philippe Vacher

MOBIL

Geometrical expression

Geometrical expression is a universal language: ancient and classical civilisations have ruled their artistic patterns on a geometry dlsciplining instability and the XXth century has purified this langage by giving it a specific expressive strength.

This qualifier situates the field of a plastics language but does not define the problematics of it enough.
Far away from the Ideological or purist orientations, my plastics research declines the unstable equilibrium which structures the apparent cohesion of the world by using elementary shapes and volumes submitted to a gymnastics of the partition, the distortion, the imbalance (surfaces broken by folding lines or distributions of contrasted values, utilization of discordant perspectives, dynamic orientation of the pieces.. .).

The accent is placed on the optic instability sensation through plastic interventions that I would call dynamic events upon plans taking the appearance of volumes or volumes which decline new identities. A sequential or alternative reading associates the contradictory but complementary poles of continuity-discontlnuity, positiveness-negativeness, fullnessemptiness, presence-absence, accordlng to the perception angle. When several elements are producted at random, their rythmic forms challenge and conserve ln the space field.

It's the case of the "Choregraphies of the square" where the shapes result from a conjugation of perspectives magnified by a set of materialized colours and shadows : every element becomes the actor of a weightlessness choregraphy.
This energizing problematics does not spoll the original purity of the geometric language. It gives it a new life, a new appearance the elegance of which owes a lot to the moderation and the pertinency of each plastic proposal. The evolution of sciences has taught us the relativity of any reference system. An art work is the opposlte of a formal equation. It considers the geometry language as a way of playing with the world by revealling its dynamic, subtle and fragile balances.

"The art work is a mediator between the abstract categories of science and the living substance of our sensitivity."
(Umberto ECO)

Philippe Vacher – 1999