François R. du Plessis – Der rote Faden
30.01. – 06.06.2015
back to overviewDer erste Blick auf die Arbeiten von François du Plessis fasziniert und irritiert zugleich. Vielfarbige Strukturen, Oberflächen wie Stein, Maserungen wie Jahresringe von Bäumen. Verschiedenste Assoziationen tun sich auf, aber das Material bleibt rätselhaft. Erst auf den zweiten Blick ist erkennbar, dass alle Werke aus Büchern gemacht sind. Buchseiten, Buchdeckel, Buchrücken, Lesezeichen – das ist es. François du Plessis Material ist das Buch. Ein Material, dem er unzählige Darstellungsmöglichkeiten abringt: Mal aufrecht nebeneinander gestellt betont er die skulpturale Qualität des Buchs, mal mit Farbe geweißt verweist er auf dessen Objektcharakter. In der Verwendung von bunten Büchern tritt er in einen Diskurs mit Analytischer Malerei und Informel.
Formal spannend und abwechslungsreich, inhaltlich vielschichtig. François du Plessis verwendet meist einen Buchtitel aus der Arbeit als Werktitel. Zufällig oder bedeutungsschwer? Die Titel öffnen Interpretationsspielräume, wie auch allein die Tatsache, dass hier ein Kulturgut höchsten Ranges scheinbar nur als Objekt gesehen wird. Tradition versus Moderne? Analog versus digital? Oder doch nicht?
Für die Stern-Wywiol Galerie zeichnet der Künstler in der Ausstellung „Der rote Faden“ seine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Buch als Bildhauermaterial nach. Das Buch ist der rote Faden im Werk. Oder ist der rote Faden gemeint, der als Lesezeichen aus vielen seiner Skulpturen hervorspringt?
François du Plessis lotet vermeintliche Alltagsgegenstände inhaltlich und formal neu aus, indem er die abstrakte Formensprache der Moderne aufgreift und umdeutet. Er nimmt so eine wichtige Position im zeitgenössischen Diskurs der „grenzenlosen Skulptur“ heute ein.
François du Plessis' book objects are irresistible. They attract the eye with their beauty, their well-dosed harmonies and disharmonies, their precision craftsmanship and, crucially, their mystery. Their obvious pleasure is accompanied by irritation and provocation from the second glance at the latest - the indispensable ingredients for real beauty.
For the material from which the objects are made is the book. The book in all its types and variations. From the simple paperback from the station bookshop to the hymnal with gold edges to the illustrated book on design classics, everything is there. François du Plessis usually buys his working material directly from publishers or from modern second-hand bookshops. Occasionally, he also uses books from a very specific context for his objects as part of a commission, for example from an estate, from a very specific author or publisher. By his own admission, books interest him exclusively as matter, as objects with certain properties, structures and colours. Can that be? Can a book be mere matter?
Or does the artist deliberately leave us alone with his works and the probing question of whether it is permissible - to use books as raw material?
Books are a cultural asset, even in the internet age. If we throw away a technically outdated (i.e. a maximum of three years old) digital reader without much hesitation, the necessary disposal of books that have been read out, are uninteresting or embarrassing presents us with problems. Well-made books are extremely durable objects. People don't like to throw books away. Because even the dumbest book stands for a centuries-long tradition of the Occident, in which the knowledge of the time was stored and passed on in books.
In addition to this reflection on the symbolic meaning of the book, there is another aspect: François du Plessis uses everyday objects in his art. With his works, he encourages us to reflect on our relationship to things in themselves. What about our relationship to things, our respect for them? Doesn't this diminish in times when we no longer know how something was made, what effort and expense it took to produce our object? Can products whose life cycle is limited by the producer to one season or to a few years awaken any emotional ties in us at all? Things store time - we are emotionally attached to the heirloom that our grandmother wore or that our father sat on and read the newspaper. Which things that are important to us today are able to store time? On reflection, aren't the things that are really important to us also the things that can store time? Don't books, and only in their printed form, belong quite preferentially to these stores of time?
François du Plessis never asks all these questions superficially and yet they are the background against which his work unfolds. Long before the first book object, the artist collected books without pursuing any particular purpose with them. As a painter, he searched for a long time for the expression that suited him.
The oldest work in our exhibition is from 1994, it is a painted canvas joined with found objects to form a collage. Eight years later, François du Plessis used books as the basis for his painting for the first time. The step from painter to sculptor, who understands the books as bodies in space and assembles them into three-dimensional objects in their own right, seems obvious in retrospect and yet is the result of years of persistent searching. The artist is constantly developing new techniques by means of which he explores the material properties of his material and elicits different, unexpected forms from it again and again. For about four years now, François du Plessis has been working with coloured book cuts, thus giving colour a decisive share in his work. In a way, he is also returning to his beginnings as a painter, even if he no longer needs a brush.
As always, I refer you to our catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition and which, for the first time, offers a retrospective look at the work of François du Plessis, but which also pays due tribute to the current works.
Enjoy and thank you for your attention!
Dr Kathrin Reeckmann, Hamburg, 29.1.2015