Poem to Be Sung, 2012
An Ode to Sol LeWitt and Two Wooden Sculptures

Site-specific installation for the solo show Objets Reposés at the M_Museum (Leuven, June - September 2012 BE)

Elements:

Object a, Object b, Object c and Object d: four white papier-mâché objects

Figure one c, Figure two d, Figure three a, Figure four b: four silver gelatine prints, framed (each 46,5cm x 56,5cm)

Objects with Figures: papier-mâché object with silver gelatine prints

Artist with removed objects, Artist with removed objects and child: two C-prints, framed (each 46,5cm x 56,5cm)

Position and Trace: performance with dancer Annegreet Sleurs during the preview on June 7th at the M_Museum; installation elements: pastel drawing on wall, performance documentation folder

Starters for Sol: miniature cake versions of Objects a-d, served during the opening of Sol LeWitt’s show ‘Colors' on June 19th at the M_Museum

The work is an ode to the Sol LeWitt 'Colors' exhibition and to two wooden sculptures belonging to M_Museum: 'Christ surrounded by six figures' (ca 1500-1525) from the first gallery of the permanent collection and 'Madonna and Child' (ca 1700) from M’s storage.

Poem to Be Sung can be interpreted as an allegory of different periods in the history of art which enter into a dialogue with each other.

The red wall refers to the colour of the wall in gallery 8 in the permanent collection of the M_Museum. The choice was made as an attempt to create a link between the different architectural spaces inside the museum.

“What drew my attention to the gestures of the hands in the sculptures 'Christ surrounded by six figures' and 'Madonna and Child' is how the body, the eye and the brain communicate a particular gesture in relation to an object. Symbolic objects are presented in an iconography which the contemporary viewer does not understand in the same way as he would have done at the time of their creation. To compensate for this discrepancy, I appropriate the gestures and their transformation and translate them into contemporary visual codes. The objects I chose for Poem to Be Sung are four elements from Sol LeWitt’s vocabulary of basic geometric forms: a cube, a cube without a cube, a pyramid and a pyramid without a pyramid (or a trapezoid).

For me the appeal of Sol LeWitt’s oeuvre lies in the precision of his visual grammar as it evolves from a single word elements to visual sentences and paragraphs before eventually becoming a complex and playful constellation. His way of working, which often consisted of having assistants execute a set of instructions – from an idea expressed in a text, to a drawing or an object – relates to my Sense Correspondence project. In Sol LeWitt’s visual grammar I found a parallel with my ongoing interest and research into non-verbal communication systems, a relationship which had a great influence on me and inspired the ode to Sol LeWitt’s oeuvre.” Ines Lechleitner

At the preview on June 7th Ines Lechleitner invited Annegreet Sleurs to ‘activate’ the white papier-mâché objects in the exhibition space, while Lechleitner traced their positions and gestures on the wall. The drawing resulting from the performance remained throughout the show as an independent art work.