Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s bust ‘Of a grenadier’ is in bloom with ripe pomegranates. Dozens of pieces of fruit are bursting open from his neck, eyes, collarbone, and from between his shoulder blades. Though the sculpture is cast in dark bronze, the suggestion of the fruit’s bright red juice is tangible. A grenadier is a solder specialized in throwing exploding grenades. Traditionally grenadiers were among the largest and strongest men, as they led the vanguard of the charge. Both ‘grenade’ and ‘grenadier’ come from the French, in which the words refer to the weapon and the soldier, but they also translate to pomegranate and pomegranate tree respectively. The sculpture plays on double-entendre in French, but it also suggests a contradiction in the imagination of war: pomegranates symbolized fertility, abundance, and desire throughout the cultures of the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. [Natasha Marie Llorens]
The bust in question here is surmounted by a multitude of a single fruit, in this case an accumulation of pomegranates. Again, it is the identity of a fruit that gives body and sense to his artwork, his sculptures. It is a very particular fruit, one of few that has given its name to a weapon*.
Mehdi-Georges Lahlou plays afresh with the ambiguity of its name and, in this case, with a certain formal relationship between the fruit and the weapon.
Some of the pomegranates seem open, exploded: a simple flash in the pan or something more dangerously depinned before approaching the irreversible? The bust is imposing not only because of the enormous headdress that crushes it, but also because of the size of its base, a concrete pedestal which, in this space, also seems to serve as a headstone that could be read as commemorative. [Bernard Marcelis]
*TN: the French word ‘grenadier’ can designate either a solider who tosses grenades or a pomegranate tree. Similarly, the word ‘grenade’ has a dual meaning as weapon or fruit.
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Pictures @nicolas__brasseur