Sculpture

Not far away, on the fossil beaches and dunes of Los Escullos and visible from my terraces, is a fort dating from the Napoleonic period to prevent piracy. It is partially restored. A draughty, empty place and not often open to view, it is popular for wedding party photographs, being near to an hotel. It proved an interesting venue for an exhibition over Easter. Hans Blömer and Ulli Butz, two sculptors working in this area assembled a joint show there. In current art world terms it was not an 'installation' but consisted of real objects crafted by the artists that one could actually touch. And yet, the assemblage held together much as an installation might, partly due to this environment.

Both sculptors were present throughout to talk enthusiastically or humorously about the work to visitors who expressed interest, though surviving the typical Easter winds hurtling through the monumental archway and spinning around this military parade square must have needed some stamina.

In isolation the work of either one of these sculptors might perhaps have had less impact here, though some of Ulli's work had sufficient scale to cope. Assembled together though, their contrasting approach generated a more than adequate dynamic. Ulli's assemblages of objets trouves, welded, bolted or screwed, even tied, have a robust humour; Hans's carefully crafted wooden objects are more lyrical. Each benefited greatly from the presence of the other, for viewers anyway and one hopes for them too.

Skilful placing was one key to their success. Openings, vacant voids behind which shadowed spaces lurked, formed ready-made frames, an obvious device for Hans's wood whose surfaces were stroked by an ever shifting light against those dark voids. Possibly less obvious was the placement of Ulli's work within the space of the solid walls, lit surfaces. Being authoritarian architecture it is, even in this simplified form, organised in proportional systems symbolic of political power. Classical in other words, based around the well known Fibonacci variants of Pythagoras' cosmic image appropriated by almost all centralised systems. And so the rhythms of solid and void created a systemic relationship. A visual glue in effect. Then nearness to the sea – it is on a cliff edge, well exploited by one small piratic figure – resulted in weathered and partly repaired surfaces of stone and stucco, neutral but natural in hue. From these a dynamic was generated between the works that might be thought of as a 'family'.

My personal preference is for the lyrical, lovingly worked forms and surfaces created by Hans, a more traditional craft. But Ulli's wit and imagination unfailingly captivate, exploited to the full in both detail and conception. Playful! 'Witzig' and much fun. So, when does a pulley block cease to be a pulley block?! Well, of course, not until its form becomes totally unrecognisable through corrosion or whatever. Even when it pretends to be the body of a flamingo it remains, on logical inspection, a pulley block. But such is this work that one is drawn into the illusion. The willingness to be deceived, a fundamental requirement for all art to be convincing, involves one in this metamorphosis enabling enjoyment both as joke and as sculpture. Entertainment! A peasant worker though, might have problems and see only pulley blocks, discarded rubbish and huge pincers. And so it is with all of these 'installations' (Ulli, it seems, hates that label. But what else is a rocking horse made up of old springs that 'gallops' gently in the winds on the old gun terrace, watched by an old 'goat'? Or the skull-like object attached to the top of a bifurcated tree trunk rocking itself in the manner of an abstracted John Wayne walk? No need for any object to resemble the gun holster.) In these objects mime is of the essence. All these old tools, the discarded detritus of an erstwhile working humanity, are mute expert mime artists gifted with imagination in their new context. This is poetic too. It transposes realities, playing humorously with our imagination and our willingness to accept deceit, at least of this kind.

All art lies.

Poetry in the work of Hans? More complex and more personal. It emerges with no less wit. Ulli's work though is not unrevealing. But that of Hans has an induced and unobstructed sensuousness due to his handling – in all senses of that word - of form and texture. It is for touching. Any semblances to the names he gives the objects, one feels, are symbolic. One can enter into the way forms inherent in the chosen piece of wood – almost always olive – have generated his response. A great crag of half decomposed wood has metamorphosed as 'Sagrada familia', Gaudí's Barcelona monument. But without this reference it would have equal power as London's 'The shard' or even something out of Tolkein's 'Mordor'. The naming, the textual naming that is, because the piece of wood has already been 'named' by selection and working, is superfluous to its impact on us, though important to Hans. It has enormous quite violent latent energies of its own, in contrast with its neighbour in the display, a 'Pythagoras' cube that expresses contained dynamic balance in solid and void.

To my taste, Hans's more directly figurative works seemed less convincing. But definitely not so the Fantasia, the 'Mochuelo' (Little Owl) nor the 'Dancer', works which seem to have sprung up almost unaided out of the wood, Prometheus like: even though one is aware of the enormous amount of work and skill involved in reaching such an illusion of expressive spontaneity.

One interesting technique caught the attention of several people when I was there. It reveals a particularly close relationship between sculptor and material. This is his insertion of metal into the medullary cracks that open in end grain, and which he also occasionally inserts in shakes. The texture and colour of the lead contrasts perfectly with the rich tawny olive wood that sometimes looks like walnut. Hans was enthusiastic in discussing the technique when interest was shown by friends and visitors. This too is something that needs skill and thought. It really draws attention to behavioural qualities latent in the wood, a time dimension. I found this very attractive, but then my father was a cabinet maker and attitudes towards wood are well ingrained in me, so to speak. The logic of this enticing work is convincingly profound, or profoundly convincing. One experiences some intense consumerist tendencies!

In effect Ulli's creates a language. He assembles old tools, components and cast-offs to 'name' things, even with some element of narrative occasionally in their placement, as in putting together two 'flamingoes' or a 'rocking horse' and 'goat'. Is this not after all what we have done over millennia of evolution – assembled grunts, growls, hisses, warbles, hoots, any random noise we can make with mouth and throat, into a new communicative logic, a new world of objects we hear but don't touch? There is some tenuous connection too with Duchamp. It is remote. Where Duchamp transforms objects by renaming them – either through presentation or text (not speech) – Ulli transforms them by reassembling them into recognisable forms that we name for ourselves. Pincers become bills (of the bird variety) when attached to a large pulley block by a sinuous metal rod. The labels are really quite superfluous!

One might say that Ulli is referential but not reverential; Hans is reverential.

Within its context the exhibition was nicely balanced, not overcrowded; nor were the visitors overcrowded sadly. There were far fewer than it deserved. The objects' relationships with the spaces they inhabited were always spatially logical, well placed, responsive. Both contrasted well in their freedom and lyricism, sometimes iconoclastic ideas, with the gross military architecture and its power complex: which they also subvert by using its textural decay to contrast with the pocked and worked surfaces of objects. I think back to a summation by Walter Benjamin:

“It may be that, in the emblem of the stone, only the most obvious features are to be seen. But it is quite conceivable and by no means improbable that the inert mass contains a reference to genuinely theological conceptions.” Give the word 'theology' its full breadth of meaning for, however secular, art has roots in 'other realities'. And add 'wood' or 'metal' to 'stone'. Then we see that these two artists have successfully visited that reference contained within Benjamin's 'stone'.

So much enjoyment there!

Both sculptors were present throughout to talk enthusiastically or humorously about their work to all visitors who expressed interest. Surviving the typical Easter winds hurtling through the monumental archway and spinning around this military mustering square though must have needed some stamina.

In isolation the work of either one of these sculptors might perhaps have had less impact here, though some of Ulli's had sufficient scale to cope. Assembled together their contrasting approach generated a more than adequate dynamic. Ulli's assemblages of objets-trouves, welded, bolted or screwed, even tied, have a robust humour; Hans's carefully crafted wooden objects are more lyrical. Each benefited greatly from the presence of the other, for viewers anyway and one hopes for them too.

Skilful placing was one key to their success. Openings, vacant voids behind which shadowed spaces lurked, formed ready-made frames, an obvious device for Hans's wood whose surfaces were stroked by an ever shifting light against mysteriously dark voids. Possibly less obvious was the placement of Ulli's work within the two dimensional space of the solid walls, lit surfaces. Being authoritarian architecture it is, even in this simplified form, organised in proportional systems symbolic of power. Classical in other words, based around the well known Fibonacci variants of Pythagoras' cosmic image appropriated by almost all centralised systems. And so the rhythms of solid and void created a systemic relationship. A visual glue in effect.

My personal preference is for the lyrical, lovingly crafted forms and surfaces created by Hans, a more traditional approach. But Ulli's wit and imagination unfailingly captivate, exploited to the full in both detail and conception. Playful! 'Witzig' and much fun. So, when does a pulley block cease to be a pulley block?! Well, of course, not until its form becomes totally unrecognisable through corrosion or destruction. Even when it pretends to be the body of a flamingo it remains, on logical inspection, a pulley block. But such is this work that one is drawn into the illusion. The willingness to be deceived, a fundamental requirement for all art to be convincing, involves one in this metamorphosis enabling enjoyment both as joke and as sculpture. Entertainment! A peasant worker though, might have problems and see only pulley blocks, discarded rubbish and huge pincers.

And so it is with all of these 'installations' (Ulli, it seems, hates that label. But what else is a rocking horse made up of old springs that 'gallops' gently in the winds on the old gun terrace, under the fascinated surveillance of an old 'goat'? Is it perhaps enticing these Trojan gates? Or the skull-like object attached to the top of a bifurcated tree trunk rocking itself in imitation of an abstracted John Wayne? (No need for any object to resemble the gun holster.) In these objects mime is of the essence. All these old tools, the discarded detritus of an erstwhile working humanity, are mute expert mime artists gifted by Ulli with imagination in their new context. This is poetic too. It transposes realities, playing humorously with our imaginations and seducing us to accept deceit, at least of this kind.

All art lies!

Poetry in the work of Hans? More complex and more personal. It emerges with no less wit though Ulli's work is not unrevealing. But that of Hans has an induced and unobstructed sensuousness due to his handling – in all senses of that word - of form and texture. It is for touching. Any semblances to the names he gives the objects, one feels, are symbolic. One can enter into the way forms inherent in the chosen piece of wood – almost always olive – have generated his response. A great crag of half decomposed wood has metamorphosed as 'Sagrada familia', Gaudís Barcelona monument. But without this reference it would have equal power as London's 'The shard' or even something out of Tolkein's 'Mordor'. The naming, the textual naming that is, because the piece of wood has already been 'named' by selection and working, is superfluous to its impact on us, though important to Hans. It has enormous quite violent latent energies of its own, in contrast with its neighbour in the display, a 'Pythagoras' cube that expresses contained dynamic balance in solid and void.

In effect Ulli creates a language. He assembles old tools, components and cast-offs to 'name' things, even with some element of narrative occasionally in their placement, as in putting together two 'flamingoes' or a 'rocking horse' and 'goat'. Is this not after all what we have done over millennia of evolution – assembled grunts, growls, hisses, warbles, hoots, any random noise we can make with mouth and throat, into a new communicative logic, a new world of objects we hear but don't touch? There is some tenuous connection too with Duchamp. It is remote. Where Duchamp transforms objects by renaming them – either through presentation or text (not speech) – Ulli transforms them by reassembling them into recognisable forms that we name for ourselves. Pincers become bills (of the bird variety) when attached to a large pulley block by a sinuous metal rod. The labels provided are really quite superfluous!

One might say that Ulli is referential but not reverential; Hans is reverential.

Ulli has a fascination with the idea of the automaton, giving to these discarded objects a new autonomous existence. On can sense a life in the 'creatures', still though they are for the most part.

Hans draws out of the material an existence it already possesses within itself. Possibly this is one reason that his work is not totally responsive to the two-dimensionality of the photographic image. The inner existence of the wood is as dynamic as the forms Hans creates from it and demands the mobility of stereoscopic vision with its constant shifts, always present however slight. It is possible to just look at Ulli's work but one must look into that of Hans. That is a strong element in making this joint show so enjoyable together with the tensions between the setting and the sculptures. In a conventional gallery setting that might not be quite so dynamic.

Within its context the exhibition was nicely balanced, not overcrowded; nor were the visitors overcrowded sadly. There were far fewer than it deserved. The objects' relationships with the spaces they inhabited were always spatially logical, well placed, responsive. Both contrasted well in their freedom and lyricism, sometimes iconoclastic ideas, with the gross military architecture and its power complex: which they also subverted by using its textural decay to contrast with the pocked or worked surfaces of objects. I think back to a summation by Walter Benjamin:

Give the word 'theology' its full breadth of meaning for, however secular, art has roots in 'other realities'. And add 'wood' or 'metal' to 'stone'. Then we see that these two artists have successfully visited that reference contained within Benjamin's 'stone'.

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To contact the artists: + 34 606 049 933

Ulli Butz