Buggenhout subsequently set his sights on becoming a sculptor. In so doing, he went in search of a direct visual language without any literal references to the real world. This principle had previously come to the fore in 1960s minimal art, which – albeit with a strictly geometric visual language – also renounced symbolic meaning. Although Buggenhout acknowledges the link, he sees himself more as a late adept of Romanticism. Nineteenth-century Romantics understood that people would never be able to grasp the world in all its complexity. But whereas they depicted this impossibility through symbolic imagery, Buggenhout pursues the autonomy of the pure object. His fondness for boli art from Mali and Togo is therefore telling. Boli votive sculptures of the West African Bambara people are only symbolic if they have been subjected to rituals. Every rite gives the figurine a new identity until it is so laden with sacrificial layers that the sculpture itself becomes meaningless. Only then does it achieve true ‘autonomy’. With this mindset, Buggenhout developed what he calls his ‘analogue’ visual language. It is based on the idea that there is no longer any correct perspective from which to comprehend reality. Method and technique coincide with meaning, without supporting it (as with most other contemporary artworks). For Buggenhout, the ‘meaning’ of his sculptures does not reference the real world, but actually is the reality.
His oeuvre displays a broad material and formal diversity within this conceptual framework. The artist’s works can, however, be divided into series. Buggenhout started working with cow stomachs in the late 1990s. He used these as sheaths for abstract, organic sculptures, to which he appended titles such as ‘Eskimo Blues’. The series culminated a decade later in another group of works entitled ‘Mont Ventoux’. The starting point was the poet Petrarch, who claimed, after climbing Mont Ventoux, that he was the first person since antiquity to climb a mountain for the view. In so doing, he forgot the fact of the mountain on which he stood, which illustrates Buggenhout’s idea that it is impossible to have any kind of all-encompassing view on reality. The first half of the 2000s saw the creation of the ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ and the ‘Gorgo’ series. The former comprises monumental amorphous sculptures, mostly made from industrial waste and carefully coated with dust by Buggenhout. They resemble archaeological objects from a distant, post-industrial future. In the latter series, Buggenhout combined industrial and organic materials, including pig’s blood and horsehair. ‘Gorgo’ is a pseudonym for the Greek goddess of revenge, Medusa, who turned anyone who looked at her into stone.
Buggenhout’s sculptures offer us, both literally and figuratively, no perspective. According to the artist, we live in a time without protagonists, primordial meaning or truths. His works are radically contemporary in the sense that they suggest no subject or meaning, just a fragmented view on reality.
