Dirk van Saene
"While I do find the relationship between ‘designer’ and ‘artist’ interesting, I don’t want to dissect my own work too much [...] I wouldn’t call these sculptures pure works of art, but that is not the point either. It's not about what they are, but what they do.”
Dirk van Saene via Gallery Sofie Van de Velde
The art world has always been rather suspicious of any form that is purely visual, a form where beauty or emotion prevails. A form that is often referred to as ‘design’ or ‘decoration’. Yet, it is precisely this twilight zone that interests Van Saene (1959, Belgium). As an artist, his work has no functionality: it still shows the human body, not in a direct context but rather as the notions of a human figure. At the same time, the emotions they depict are equally as important. His sculptures are the stage-managers of their own story. Not only with regard to their material, colours and shapes but also in the historic value that they carry and that he assigns to them.
