“This is not a sculpture”

René Magritte painted a pipe, by writing above the legend “This is not a pipe” and titling the painting “The Treachery of Images” (1928) to remind us that he even  told us: “It it’s only a representation. If I had written on my picture: “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying!”.

Even if this painting of Magritte looks like a pipe, it is only the representation of it and, consequently, to say that the representation is the object  would be a lie.The “lie” is nowadays more obvious in a world ever more fascinated by technology and virtual imagine that distances us from reality. We are every time less been used to the direct contact with the work, with the tangible reality. Often the power of the digital image replaces the contemplation or direct perception of objects.Sometimes it seems that we have more pleasure to contemplate the image of the object that directly the object itself.

Volíeu dir: .Parfois l’on dirait même que l’on a davantage de plaisir à contempler l’image de l’objet que directement l’objet lui-même.

The “image”, the photography, when it serves to reproduce and to represent the reality, is just an attempt of graphic  approach to reality and often has a very specific purpose: to try to interpret the reality .Often since a single point of view.

However, the sculpture is a solid three-dimensional reality and expresses the willingness to intervene in the space. Beyond that may represent or communicate, it articulates his relation with the space. This is probably also the case for the arts or everyday objects that have in common the fact of having been created to intervene in space.

In the direct contemplation of a sculpture, the privileged spectator instinctively turns his attention to the materiality and objectality of the physical work. It is not its image, either the concept, or the idea of ​​the work the priority objective, but its particular materialization and the sensory experience that it provokes at the spectator.

Inevitably, the two-dimensionality of the images and the frame of the screen of the computer, unfortunately reduce the possibilities of the experience of contemplation of the work live. Although it is sometimes certain that it can indicate them, letting the freedom to the spectator to guess the profiles and the volumes of the work.

Spanish sculptor Angel Ferrant, by giving us an example, told us in a text (1957), that; The girl who combs her hair in front of the mirror, makes sculpture … The sculpture is somehow intrinsically bound to our daily life so involuntarily, instinctively.

This is the way I also conceive Sculpture. Whether it is a masterpiece or not. It is that we can contemplate directly, that we can touch, feel or caress, and allows us to establish a physical, intellectual or sensual contact. It can ask us or left indifferent, but it is intrinsically, an existing physical reality. We can turn it around, or it can make us change our perception of reality. But it is mainly the art that transmits to us physical sensations that gradually dazzled by the images and the media which surrounds us, we have forgotten and replaced by substitutes of reality: a virtual reality.

So,as we said before, knowing that “appearances are deceptive” I’m sorry to have fallen into the mistake of showing my work here with images. Nothing can replace the experience of contemplation live.

This is not a sculpture” would be the most appropriate way to put below every image of the works that you can see on my site. This may seem a paradox ,a contradiction, but it is perhaps the more appropriate title. The most faithful to reality.

Pascal Plasencia
March 2014