At first sight it seems as if Bruno Guihéneuf  doesn't easily uncover his own identity.

Indeed, in the range of visual arts he opens different registers: morphological very diversified sculptures, land art and environments used as a spiritual connection with the landscape. Moreover there are his so called  papiers de granit, a unique graphical technique that confides the proper structure of the stone to the paper. These diverse artistic levels practised by  Guihéneuf seem to develop totally independently from each other, nevertheless they share a common dimension and philosophical view.

 

Fluxis the common denominator in which the artist  bundles a number of sculptures to scan the spatial order and at the same time he confirms that the primal stone cutting hasn't alienated from the world yet. Fluxis derived from the Latin fluere- meaning to flow or to stream. As a concept fluxis mainly used in mathematics or physics to define a  process of throughput. Energy, time, space and surface are resolute factors in this process. Applying this concept on the work of Bruno Guihéneuf  tells me that his creations unite all these elements and are mainly built on universal opposites : static- dynamic ; hard- fragile; cosmic - terrestrial ; light- dark .....

 

In the most simple form the greatest versatility and complexity is to be found.

This statement from the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi  can be a useful approach to the work of this French artist. In fact Guihéneuf  is a formalist and a structuralist. By turning to specific kinds of stone like granite, marble or  blue stone (occasionally combined with bronze, iron or wood) the artist by using simple forms can attain a headstrong sculptural language of images. The manually hacked, sawn and chiselled stones reveal a unity of planes, lines, grooves and points leading to an expressive form of the work of art, be it in the two dimensional treatment of the surface skin or in the three dimensional  impact on the environment: a harmony that at the same time is aggressive and tender, powerful and fragile but also attracts and rejects.

The sculptures not only possess a mysterious expressivity, they also have a great deal of imaginative power. The simple forms, the organic roughness of the texture, the constructive aspect, the graphical rhythm of the lines and the dialogue between the different materials evoke various associations and interpretations: dolmen and menhirs from the stone age, weathered tree bark, enlarged fragments of skin folds, scratches, notches and documents of long gone cultures, geological segments of capricious sandrils drawn on the beach by the sea between ebb and flood.

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The work of Guihéneuf is a constant plastic translation of a polarity moving between the core of the own identity, the I( man and artist) and the be, a whimsical flux, with everything chaotically turning around it, the unpredictable power of life lines and life powers.

 

Freddy Huylenbroeck  | curator  id+ Art Centre Hamme.  

(English translation by Mark Suy)

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