Forms of Fiction
“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”
-Le Corbusier
MIAMI, FL—Mindy Solomon Gallery presents the first Miami-based solo exhibition of work by French artist Dominique Labauvie February 27-April 3 in Wynwood. An opening reception for ‘Forms of Fiction’ will take place Friday, February 27th, from 6-9pm; guests are invited to meet the artist at the event. The gallery is located at 172 NW 24th Street, Miami.
Dominique Labuavie’s sculpture is defined by an abstract calligraphy that tells a story within the space it occupies. The fictions are elaborated through form and line. His linear articulations become a three-dimensional narrative.
Labauvie states:
“My sculpture not only addresses the line as a record to ‘transport time into space,’ but it also manipulates the material nature of the steel. Steel is actually not natural but a man-made material, with the exception of the iron meteorite that falls from the cosmos onto earth. From the mineral to the industrial product, we can say that steel is a pure product of human inventiveness and work. As Valéry wrote in 1937, “What would we be without steel?”
The floor of the studio where I work is a surface on which I move. The segments of the sculpture are laid out, unconnected and moving all the time without a predetermined direction as in a drawing. As I work, the image appears and disappears—creating a kind of high and low tide of perception. The line and its speed, its texture, tension or extension is found well within the nature of the steel; it constructs the different rhythms of its presence and names them. When a line bends, it slows down; as it expands, it suddenly appears as a flat surface—it carves out its presence in space like a black hole.
The ground (any ground: earth, wood or stone) hosts the forged lines as the landscape that for centuries has been mapped by rivers, roads and highways. Drawing engraves the style of my sculpture. Drawing is one of the mental references of the sculpture and in a sense it’s a form of partnership. The line informs us about the absent forms, as only the missing remain in our memories, our books, and in our images. The line attests to the desire of thought.”
Labauvie’s work is monumental in its simplicity. The strong line, singularly expressed against negative space, becomes a bold punctuation mark, bisecting the world around it.
About Dominique Labauvie
Dominique Labauvie was born in Strasbourg, France and now lives and works in Tampa, Florida. He is a recipient of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant and the Rome Prize.
Labauvie has received numerous commissions for Public Sculptures in Europe and the United States. His work is exhibited internationally and is included in public and private collections worldwide.
