T.M.C. Volckaert (b 1979, Oudenaarde) places a construction of metal and brick in the Kunst Nu-space. It is a ‘sculpture-installation’ that contradicts itself in many ways.
It is a recalcitrant object in which he both emphatically confirms and passionately disputes the laws of central linear perspective. Five metal frames filled with bricks are supported by long square pipes which are reminiscent of the bars of a cage or cell. When all the frames are placed in an upright position the work cuts the whole space, like a cross section, into half and so prevents one from crossing to the other side of the room. Together the five elongated brick planes – the middle one is rectangular and the other four in the shape of a trapezium – form a two-dimensional representation of the narrow, high space situated on the other side . This elementary perspective drawing of metal, coloured with deep red brick is in the shape of a bow, a motif that we find for example in many of the paintings by the Dutch painter René Daniëls. Volckaert’s construction acts as an instrument that leads our view into the depth as well as blocks it, and confirms and fragments the perspective view. It moves on the intersection between openness and closeness, earthliness/ worldliness and weightlessness, and immobility and dynamism. These divergent, even contrary, forces have been brought together very compactly to form what the artist himself describes as a ‘monumental sculpture-installation’.
