‘Eingeschloβenes weitet sich aus.’ What is enclosed expands. Sculpture and life each other alike
[Hortence Petroen on the artistic practice of Laurence Petrone, Zauberberg/Davos, 2021]
In an interview with Belgian sculptor Bernd Lohaus, Laurence Petrone read the words ‘eingeschloβenes weitet sich aus’, words she translates and interprets freely as ‘what is enclosed expands’.
She recognised his words. Prior to her studies in Sculpture the thought arose:
“Everything is enclosed within itself. It is a matter of looking carefully. (But what makes me look, what enables seeing?)
…
Words, things, people – everything that is, distinguishes itself by the capacity of man – this sensory being gifted with the ability to think and speak – to be in and from creativity: to bring forth anything possible from within itself (ourself). Tantamount is the lucidity in and by which this takes place, the lucidity that is made present because of it. In this lucidity another way of allowing what I am is possible.”
Incapable of identifying what this ‘other way’ exactly is, she knows that the artistic gesture is substrate and breeding ground for it. It is another kind of encounter, at the same time odd – because up to the moment of allowing it to happen unknown – and familiar, intimately familiar and recognisable. It defines poetry as poetry, lover as lover, human being as human being. Something is spirited, something is ensouled.
Since her Bachelor in Sculpture she recognised that she thinks in images and that it is possible to manifest these images through the sensory aspect of things: that and how colour, material, the texture and the physical invasiveness of things can make one speak. She combines this with the sculptural quality of the written and spoken word.
A personal motivation and longing, also during her previous studies, is the question how what one does, can make one aware or perceptive of what we are and of what can be. It is her striving that sculpture can evoke and transmit this. She embeds this by questioning what she learns from Joseph Beuys, and his broadened concept of art, his ideal of creativity and freedom in particular.
Foto:
Laurence Petrone, Gib acht, O Mensch [wat is de zintuiglijkheid van zwart?], Belgische blauwe hardsteen (180 x 30 x 18 cm), water, zonlicht d.d. 12.06.2021 13u27. Foto: Hans Theys.