Philippe Vacher

Today, the focus is (on)...

"Today, the emphasis is on the process, on the possibility of identifying individual orders. The kind of expectation aroused by a message with an open structure is less a prediction of the expected than an expectation of the unpredictable." (Umberto Eco in "The Open Work")

The large structures result from the articulation of modular elements in a given space. Their reading is sequential: first the work is discontinuous ; but then its perception is the result of the addition of multiple views corresponding to the movement of the viewer.
These structures are the results of a dialectic between:

the conceived and the perceived:

between the mental representation (map) and different spatial representations (perspectives). The work refuses to interact with the spectator on a reading mode which is exclusively frontal and arbitrary.

the continued and discontinued:

between the form (appearance) and the internal structure (system of interactive elements). The form is an event-structure insofar as it is the expression of a field of relations with its own emerging qualities.

the closed and the open:

between the forces of attraction (cohesion) and repulsion (dis integration). The work and the material structure themselves according to contradictory and complementary energy requirements.

the harmonious and discordant:

the network of relations integrates discrepancies, random factors through which the ensemble is open, interacts with other ensembles, can mutate and reinvent itself. In addition, the visual problematic is open to a un-finished number of formal combinations. It is a questioning of the rationalist thought.

« Bring as one what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder. Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. » (Heraclitus)

Philippe Vacher – 1991