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8.10.04

Sculpture by Pierre Culot

Pierre Culot, SculptureRoger Pierre Turine wrote an article (Les sculptures-jardins de Culot, October 5) for La Libre Belgique about a sculpture installation in an out-of-the-way place, the Parc Tournay-Solvay, attached to the Château de La Hulpe in Boitsfort, near Brussels (until November 3):

Solid pillars of stone blocks in their raw state, flanked by a beam supporting the living mass of old used iron pipes, that's what puts one strolling through the nearby superb park in autumn blossom immediately into an unaccustomed ambiance! Pierre Culot has occupied the space with the ease of someone who has been led by the august working of the earth (he was a renowned potter at one time) to take up otherwise hair-raising challenges. [...] With the ease of a person who cannot be stopped, Culot throws himself into the environment with emblatic sculptures that react above all to this consumerist society that wears out everything, throws everything away, sacrifices everything without a care in the world for what may happen tomorrow. Independantly perhaps of the symbolism contained in recycling everything (old iron pipes, quills, odds and ends) in combination with trees and grass, the sculptor invites us to a happy walker's reflection on what is implied together by nature and what man makes of it.
Inside the nearby Villa Blanche, photographer Philippe Saenen, a frequent collaborator, is showing his remarkable photos of Culot's sculpture. I don't know about what the reviewer sees in them, but I found the sculpture pictured in the article (shown here) to be visually arresting and even creepy, with its heavy stone supported by the twisted pipes reminiscent of limp pasta or intestine. So, I did some searching, and here's a couple other things you can peruse:Culot has done a number of "earthworks" sorts of installations that involve megalithic stone construction, like the Mur cyclopéen pour Tractebel (1989) he made in Brussels. I am still looking for a few more images.

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