With [sculpture trail], Luxembourg Art Week brings together a selection of works and installations presented in open air. Their placement traces a route through the city, inviting encounters with art along the streets, in everyday journeys and places.
[sculpture trail] benefits from the generous support of the City of Luxembourg.
Bernard Pagès
A & B 2017, 2018
Twisted and oxidized steel cube, stainless steel cube, painted solid iron link, 490 x 195 x 280 cm
Presented by Ceysson & Bénétière
Location
Place de Metz
L-1930 Luxembourg
In A & B, Bernard Pagès sets two cubes of identical dimensions against each other, though their materiality and configuration are opposed. One, drawn in fine metal edges, gives only its perimeter, while the other, made of a dense tangle of iron, asserts its volume.
This formal correspondence between the two cubes brings out a subtle interplay between solid and void, volume and outline, presence and absence. Where the first lets the eye travel through it and makes visible the space it delimits, the second gives that space material form through an accumulation of lines and matter. A single geometric form is thus realised in two radically different ways.
Between them, a sinuous line of red-painted iron forms a dynamic link. With its curves and changes of direction, it breaks with the rigour of the cube and introduces a tension between geometry and movement, construction and irregularity.
The work is thus built on a play of oppositions and correspondences: order and disorder, lightness and density, structure and accumulation. By confronting these elements, Bernard Pagès subverts the usual relationship between balance and weight, bringing forth a sculptural arrangement in which each form retains its singularity while contributing to an overall equilibrium.
Biography
Bernard Pagès is a contemporary French sculptor, born in Cahors, in the Lot region, in 1940. He was part of the Supports/Surfaces movement. He arrived in Paris in 1959, and it was at the Atelier d'Art Sacré that he realized how accessible sculpture could be. In 1967, after seeing an exhibition by the Nouveaux Réalistes in Nice, he gave up both painting and traditional sculpture.
That same year, Pagès helped launch the Supports/Surfaces movement. He began making sculptures from discarded materials, then moved on to assembling bricks, wood, tiles, stone, gravel, pipes and more. He organized these groupings into what he called Inventories, Nomenclatures and Enumerations. Over time, his work has become increasingly colorful and baroque.
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