Ephemeral & Infinite

The question of perception is at the heart of the ephemeral & infinite series. Traduttore traditore says the Italian expression, which perfectly summarizes the phenomenon of distortion linked to perception. To translate is in fact to betray, since our understanding of the world can only pass through the interpretation that each of us makes of it via our perceptive filters.

Whether it is our senses or our mind, our bodies offer us a rich array of apprehension of our environment. However, this complex perceptual tool is also a filter that induces an interpretation. Interpretation is therefore an inescapable dimension of our living condition. With Ephémère & infini VDB has set up different sub-groups of reflections which all question the gap between reality and translation of reality inherent in our perception of things.

Moon and Guns
Moon and Guns and Other Monstrous Objects (Carrara White Marble)

Work on the theme of consciousness developed with the CISA (Interfaculty center for affective sciences, Unige, Campus Biotech), based on the theory of Pr David Rudrauf (Theory of projective consciousness).
Principle: Freeze an object under a precise angle of view and apply to it the projective logic of the angle in question. The result is a distorted 3D object that is fair only from the single angle of view offered to visitors, but “monstrous” as a whole. Thus, each spectator can somehow turn around his own perception by walking around the object, and thus detach himself from his own projection. A drop shadow projects an undistorted silhouette of the object. By the interplay between reality and its projection (the object and its shadow), it is here alluding to Plato’s Myth of the Cave. But unlike Plato’s prisoners who take the shadows for real external objects, with this proposition it is the shadow that tells the truth. Here, in fact, the shadow (or the projection of the object) is more faithful to reality than the object itself. (*for more information, see the description in the attached exhibition link).

Pistols are objects that are based on the very mechanism of the function of the gun, namely the analogy between projectile and projection. The gap between the blow and the impact is assimilated to that which occurs between reality and its perception. This shift mechanism embodies here the phenomenon of transformation that consciousness operates when it constructs an image of reality.

The moons are objects built on the phenomenon of the “illusion of the moon”, a perceptual phenomenon still poorly understood and where the size and sometimes the shape of the moon changes. With its hidden face, the “Moon illusion” phenomenon represents a rich space of creativity and poetry where an infinity of myths and representations are anchored. Here, for example, the sculpture takes on an elliptical shape proposing to revisit the symbolism of the egg and the myth of origins.

Impossible equations

Impossible Equations: Like the Rings series, these installations fit into larger work that uses the theme of the Universe to offer visualizations of infinity. But rather than using the notion of scale between the finite and the infinite, the series of impossible equations proposes to stage the absence of a center. Science tells us that infinity by definition has no center, since it is everywhere. A concept that is difficult for the human mind to conceive, but a concept that shows how much our need for representation is an inherent dimension of our consciousness. The approach chosen by these installations confronts the notion of space with that of time by exploiting the example of the Universe, which, if it has a possibly infinite expansion, also has a temporal unfolding. So if we go back in time to the origins of the Universe (Big Bang) we end up with a point. Where is this point located? In another space or is the space contracted in this point? Unsolvable question because it is very counter-intuitive not to associate a place with this starting point. This is what the impossible equations show which show spirals without centers and which freeze a seemingly logical process, but which quickly turn out to be mysterious, even impossible when we try to reconstruct the origin of these frozen movements. Understanding the origin of things by reading the present by retracing visible events is a typical phenomenon of human thought. It is a logic that presupposes erased prior events that need to be reconstructed. The quest for origins is probably a quest for identity that has haunted since the dawn of time the areas of our symbolic thought (art, science, philosophy and religion). Our imple presence involves a chronological process which, when traced, leads to our origins. This exercise is the engine of the tireless question that comes up against the wall of the mystery of the silent immensity in which we are immersed. In this series of installations, the absence of a center becomes the symbol of the inaccessible origin. As with the Universe, a center that would be everywhere circumvents the need for a starting point. “Why would there be something rather than nothing?” says Hubert Reeves, a proposal that circumvents any idea of ​​a creator. Emptiness as the absence of truth is also an allusion to the atheistic dimension of VDB’s work.

The aesthetics and the rustic materials chosen for these installations take up the language of the Pendules series, where flints (archaic objects) symbolize the origins of the organization of matter.

Adam & Eve

Work which is in line with previous research on perception and the relationship to infinity and which is based on an alphabet of symbols intended to bring things to their simplest expression. Concretely, the Adam & Eve theme is here a pretext to illustrate the dialogue that takes place between reality and perception. In this work only two symbols, the straight line and the curve, combine to compose forms. The line symbolizes infinity and the inert stability of nothingness, while the curve embodies movement, interpretation, life. All the sculptures in this series strive to show the direct inaccessibility of reality and the need to translate it in order to understand it. The line is this imperturbable background which preexists us and which is insensitive to our presence, whereas the curve is an illusion and a mental construction which seizes the nothingness from which we come to bring it back to our scale. The curve is therefore this gesture which brings the line back into the bosom of our understanding. Added to this idea of ​​movement is a play between horizontal and vertical (cf. Rising Rings work). The line is associated with flatness and horizontal expanse, while the curve inscribes an arc in space that lifts and brings things back to us. This work involves a human-centered principle that only defines the Universe through the limits of our interpretation. In this proposition the line does not exist because it curves to infinity. The line is therefore only the extract of a giant curve inaccessible on a human scale. Finally, we must see in this dialogue between curve and straight a game of complementarity and interdependence. Here, paradoxically, it is the curve that makes the line exist, since without interpretation reality remains inaccessible.

The Davids

(photos Stefan Vos)
(installation, 20 statuettes on bases and 20 B/W prints 60×45 cm).

Work that highlights the distortions related to interpretation. Twenty statuettes of David by Michelangelo bought in souvenir shops in the Florence market were photographed and then enlarged (the heads only) to the same size as the original work. These statuettes, often signed and of variable dimensions (between 20 and 40 cm), were all created by the hands of more or less renowned sculptors who had to reproduce the original David at a reduced size. Each sculptor was therefore forced to reshape, and therefore translate, Michelangelo’s work of nearly 5m high, in a small way, with his eyes and hands as his only tools. The variety of portraits taken from these small models brought back in photo to the real size of the real David manages to capture in a playful and effective way the interpretative hazards that each artist has had to face.

Set of works that marks the beginning of reflections on the question of perception and the relationship of scales that we have with infinity. But here it is time more than space that is the central subject. The symbols of the curve and the line are already present but this time to try to visualize our relationship to time. Infinite time versus ephemeral life installs this same idea of ​​interdependence described in other works (Pendules, Rings, etc.). The fleeting living gives a sense, a rhythm, even a chronology to inert and infinite time. Does time alone exist? Does life reveal it?

Sand Spiral

Here, the notion of spiral, eastern vision of time, is opposed to the right, western vision of time. The inert sand, moved by this device, makes spirals. With each revolution new rings of sand erase and cover the old ones. Like the cycles that punctuate nature (seasons, planets, etc.), through its confrontation with matter, time allows itself to be shaped and reshaped.

Eye frame, Sail Ring, Venus

A game of curves and straight lines that integrates a projection zone, namely a dematerialized representation space. Mirror, basin of water, reflective veil, are here so many receptacles of perception. Each of these devices shows a captured and distorted extract of a larger reality. Each reflection is therefore also the result of the mixture between our own projection and that of reality.

Ephemeral & Infinite

Initial work on the symbols of the curve and the line and which details the abstraction of the perceptual effort which curves the universe to bring it back to our scale. A work that opts for minimalism and focuses on translating infinite expanse into possible visualization through the transformation from straight to curved.

Cycles & Scales

Series of sculptures which takes up the abstract play of curves created by the perceptual game and which tries to bring it back to figurative representations. Applying these curved segments to the body means bringing the perceptual abstraction back to where it came from, that is to say to the human. Cycles and curves seek here to draw balances like drawings that dance in space and highlight movement alone, as a symbol of life.