Sofie Haesaerts
Sofie Haesaerts has been working on series of three-dimensional works that explore the notions of sculpture. This ongoing research work deals with “sculptural composition” and ways of installing various elements in a specific space.
The elements she uses in these compositions are often ordinary objects, commonly found in an urban landscape or in a domestic milieu. By the unconventional use of these recycled materials, we see reality from a different perspective. These sculptural elements intersect with the various disciplines of industrial design, theatre-lighting and scenography.
This “game” of creating differing perspectives through the uncommon use of materials and forms is the central theme of her research. It revolves around the sensory experience of the object, its perception and the relation between what it was and what it has become. The functional object transforms into an unusable object, which by its form continues to refer to its origin. Within the changing compositions of the various elements, development through a search for composition, form, rhythm, reflection, light and shadow.
These result in independent sculptures, spatial changes, site-specific installations or photographic studies that follow this evolution of the “variable or ever-changing sculpture”. Some sculptures are made from prefabricated materials. Since 2008 she started working with Indian crafts people who made copies of these ready-made forms that are industrially manufactured. The crafted copies in bamboo, cane, turned wood and brass confuse the perception of which is the original object. She mixes these elements also with self-made sculptural parts.
By rearranging this growing group of sculptural parts, these “evolving sculptures” are built. The “evolving sculptures” find a new form over time; thereby time too plays a pivotal role. As a sculpture, the set-up is impermanent and the elements of the sculptural work may be re- used or recycled in another installation in either the same or a different space. A work therefore is always evolving and yet is never finished, as it has hidden within its installation an unlimited potential compositions.
