Exhibition

Rein Dufait - Corpus alienum

4 Mar 2018 – 1 Apr 2018

Event times

Thu-Sun, 14-18 hrs

Cost of entry

Free admission

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Extended Matter part II

About

The work of Rein Dufait evolves around the nature-culture contradiction, a contradiction he means to undo. The process of making and growing is elementary in order to conceive a work (an idea). The labour remains visible, giving breath to the works and allowing breath to flow freely; he brings the work form the maker to the viewer, transforming it from a work into a living thing.
Just like time is visible in nature, it is in this body of work. The works seem delicate and light, although the materials are sometimes heavy and sluggish. The artist has the aptitude to add a sense of cheerfulness, or better, joy to the forms. A will to live and a lust for life. As a result, the works are not static, but enlivened by the methodical labour and correspondence to natural shapes. Both next to and inside nature he creates a world of his own where the objects are asking to be transformed precisely like this. Make it new. What wasn’t, once it is shown, becomes the evident.

At this moment, with still about a week and a half to go before the opening, the only things visible are two stacks of wooden casings on top of two large tables. Inside, the freshly cast concrete sculptures are drying, and will only reveal themselves in a week or so, when the casings and sand in which they have been cast, layer upon layer, will be removed. Rodin comes to mind, but only briefly and somehow in reverse; a negative to his positive. These sculptures weren’t already pre-existing; they will be the result of digging and being dug-up, an archaeology of thought and process.

The starting point for this exhibition is a rather conceptual exercise into the nature of sculpture and a way to think about and deal with connections, volume and space, while simultaneously acting upon the behaviour of the materials used – Dufait already experimented with sand as a mould for casting concrete at the beach of Ostend, when he found himself without a proper studio for making larger works, and the more stable conditions at P/////AKT allow him to research its sculptural potential more extensively. 
The sand, which is both pliant and firm, offers a direct way of creating tunnel-like shapes by only using one’s hand and arm. Within the context (or confinement) of the casings, the variations are limitless and new choices can be made with each new layer. The outcome will both resemble and not resemble the mental picture on which these consecutive acts, still aesthetic decisions in a way, have been based. And this is where the assembling begins. Once the casings and sand have been removed, and the sculptures are exposed to other another context and different laws, the final assembling begins.

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Rein Dufait

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