Publications CV & contact
Marion de Cannière Gallery, Antwerp, 2019
bricks, cement, metal struts
800 x 600 x 480 cm
The wheel is often considered one of man’s greatest inventions. But while it certainly has brought us far, initially it was not intended to take us from here to there. The potter’s throwing wheel did not bridge spaces; it created new volumes. It is a perfect example of how man-made tools in their turn produce other artifacts, often obscuring the originating apparatuses.
In his work Leon Vranken plays with the constituting elements of sculpture and image, proposing plastic solutions to artistic conundrums of his own making. The new bodies of work exhibited here all testify to this fundamental mode of operating.
The first room gathers a series of paintings, which upon closer inspection defy our notions of what a painting is. Presented on top of crates –which do not reveal their actual purpose in relation to the works they support–, these flat, striped canvases give the impression of banners, display models, or fabric samples. Their surface value is offered up-front, with a salient art historical reference to Daniel Buren’s viral 8,7 cm wide stripes. The backsides of these works however remain mostly hidden from sight, for now. One needs to go full-circle before they are properly revealed.
Cultural techniques1 are techniques that constitute a reality. That is, they shape our world in such a way that it is altered to a point where it is no longer the world from where these techniques once originated. It is tempting to think of art as the ultimate cultural technique, but art is most often not that powerful. A door, for example, is a cultural technique par excellence: it creates the realities of inside and outside. The wheel also is a cultural technique, not perhaps so much in its use as a pottery wheel, but as a vital part of the mechanics that have dramatically altered man’s sense of distance, and with it, of time and space.
The second room holds a gathering of objects and images, hand-made or selected by Vranken. This didactic collection of study objects and research references offer an insight into the visual thinking of the artist. Hanging on the wall, the wagon wheel and the ship’s steering wheel represent archetypical wheel shaped objects that have moved from the industrious world of trade and travel to the decorative realm of rural and nautical interior designs. Rather than adopting a strategy of cynical appropriation, Vranken opts to manufacture the displayed wheel-related objects himself, because making truly is thinking.
In the third room, three photographs show apparatuses of dislocation: a ladder, small steps, and a wheelchair access ramp. Making use of the unreliable nature of photography, the scale of the represented objects and of the prints themselves throw off our usual perception of these utilities. Alongside the prints is another new work, which has been growing over a longer period of time. The display case holds a selection of wooden door stop wedges, taken by the artist from public buildings such as schools, hospitals, and civil service offices.
Both the staged photographs and the collection of wedges are part of an ongoing exploration of devices that create access. But through Vranken’s playful approach of these devices, we are going nowhere, or rather: we stay where we are. You climb the ladder only to go down another one. The wedge refers to an open door which we are to assume is now closed, since the wedge is lying here, stripped from its cultural-technical agency.
Upon re-entering the first room, but now from the other end, we find ourselves confronted with a plethora of makeshift solutions to keep the striped paintings standing upright. This rearview candidly reveals the tireless Sisyphus labor of the artist: keeping it up.
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
– Dead or Alive, 1985
1As defined by Bernhard Siegert in his book Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and other articulations of the Real, 2015”
Text by Samuel Saelemakers
Sculptural solutions, 2019
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions
Goodyear, 2019
built-in car tyre
60 x 60 x 18 cm
built-in car tyre
60 x 60 x 18 cm
Sculptural solutions, 2019
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions
Sculptural solutions, 2019
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions
Wood, acrylic, canvas, found objects
various dimensions