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Texts

Philippe Vacher

MOBIL

Constructed - Deconstructed

Constructed - deconstructed is a plastic language using elementary geometric shapes (lines, planes, volumes...) related to each other through a mode of organization involving random data or scattered readings (perception from various viewpoints) according to a given space.

What matters here is the use of apparently contradictory concepts as a principle of contruction for a plastic project, the latter resulting from a dynamic antagonism and being perceived both as stable and unstable form or structure.
"... he who holds the contradiction... holds the world." Stéphane LUPASCO in "The Three Matters"

1 expresses a philosophy of dynamic balance which governs the organization of matter and the working of thought.
2 uses an elementary geometric language (lines, planes volumes...) and favours the constructive relationship between these elements in a 2D or 3D space.
3 redefines the concept of structure as the outcome of a dual action: constructive and déconstructive: a work is a field of antagonistic forces which implies stability and unstability.
4 acknowledges the relevance of the break of discrepancy principle through which a system of organization is open. Random setups are open systems par excellence since they enable the spectator to construct his/her own reading. Any closed system is banned.
5 establishes the relationship between work and setting : on the latter depend not only the perception of a work but also its structure.
6 takes into account the dynamic role of perception : a work is designed to be perceived both in its continuity and in its discontinuity.
7 asserts the dynamic character of the work : it is motion and energy, of the same nature as the thought which has produced it. Its rhythmic balance remains unstable. Any optical phenomenon of a vibratory nature does not reveal this true dynamic character as a constructive principle. It comes within the field of visual experience.
8 favours volume over surface if the latter does not bear a constructed relationship with the setting or does not involve what is out of shot in its constructive problematics.
9 as virtual motion prevail over actual motion in order to appeal to the spectator's active behaviour, his/her movement in space. With kinetic works active perception is hindered as we are subjected to their motion.
10 advises to use all supports, materials, matters, new techniques as means of expression.
11 admits subjectivity in the creative process : a work is not exclusively a mathematical model to be consumed.
"The work is the go-between of the abstract categories of science and the living matter of our sensitivity." U. Eco
12 asserts the role of the artist as an experimenter : art is above all a laboratory of ideas which commits each artist individually. The utopic dimension prevails over the functional one which brought about the productivist drift of the turn of the century.

Philippe Vacher – 1992