Nancy Vuylsteke de Laps
August 28th – October 10th
If one of the main functions of art is to try to make emotion palpable, sculpture has a definite advantage in this regard: it is in three dimensions. But is it in the material kneaded and worked by the artist’s hands that we find what touches our eyes and makes our soul vibrate?
Is it in the way in which the artist manages to “resonate” the void around his work?
It is, obviously, from the combination of these two phenomena that the emotion that we can feel in front of a sculpture is born: the meeting between the material, nourished by the artist’s gestures and the void, where vibrates the infinite number of people. Then – and only then – the work emits this echo whose intensity reaches us. Suddenly, we are projected into the extremely fragile where a feeling of plenitude mingles, putting at a distance the inevitable everyday life of the world and the diffuse impression of a happiness that we know to be fleeting.
It is this fragile moment that Nancy Vuylsteke de Laps captures in her sculptures. His characters look like us. They carry our anxieties and our impulses, our dreams and our hopes. They are both ourselves and the stranger within us. Made up of our hesitations and our doubts, they dare the impulses which, sometimes, secretly make our hearts beat.
This is the quest of Nancy Vuylsteke de Laps. By releasing from the movement all the spontaneity that is its driving force, it reveals its purity and strength. they are bursts of life that she offers us. Beyond that, by striving to give them an eternity, she invites us to approach the mystery of being – so true that only art can claim it.
Edouard DOR, Juin 2014
“Look at Nancy’s characters. They swing their bodies of soft material between heaven and earth, as if kneaded by the blast of the wind. They hesitate, doubt, question, waver and then suddenly, launch out – hopelessly taken by liberty.”
“For me, the human being is the perfect representation of life: his movements, the emotion which constantly crosses him, his vibrations which transform the space which surrounds him. This is what I try to capture in my hands and to restore through these pieces of matter“.
Nancy VUYLSTEKE DE LAPS