dré devens
* David Courtney [kunsthistoricus/kunstcriticus] (2003):
RECLAIMING THE SENSES
Dre Devens’ art is Constructivist in style. The Constructivists (whether Russian, British, Limburgian, or German) are the artists most self-consciously dedicated to the gratification of the human senses. Their art best reflects the erotic/sensualist/aesthetic reality, a superior reality to the established commercial reality of having and acquiring. Marx writes, “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it—when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc.,--in short when it is used [Marx’s emphasis] by us.”1
Marx favored an art that would immerse the senses in the process of discovery, wonder, and sensualist imagination. It is through the body (the soma), and its emotional and mindful responses, that all of the material (natural and invented) objects are to be embraced and understood. The liberated individual organizes life around the senses of hearing, taste, touch, smell, and seeing which provide the foundation for the perception of all the material world. Vladimir Tatlin’s Constructivist tower Monument to the Third International is an example of an art that captivates the senses. His transparent, diagonal building disrupts the typical viewer’s comfort as to what a building looks like and is. He invites viewers to build again this unexpectedly harmonious structure that is an unencumbered display of the process and materials he used in the construction of a transcendent dynamic form. Constructivism provides “a negation of the realistic-conformist mind” in favor of “an emancipation of sensibility, imagination, and reason in all spheres of subjectivity and objectivity.”2
Devens’ art also upsets viewers’ expectations. In his Memory of the Incomprehensible, he first slows viewers’ perceptions. The room appears to be empty. Because of their presumptions as to what an artwork is, many may ask themselves “where is the art?” Or, “what is the artwork and what was already here?” Devens’ material additions to the environment are few, but essential to the sense of visual understanding. For in his art that which is most transformed is not the space but the viewer. The viewer enters the space thinking it will contain a beautiful object. To their surprise they learn there is a beautiful object, and it is the organization of the space and the viewer’s participation in discovering its infinite number of perfected combinations. The viewer sits on the floor and the yellow stripe grows in size as does the counter-balancing form above it to keep the elements in equilibrium. The viewer stands and moves three meters and an utterly new sculpted environment emerges. The space, built before Devens’ manipulations, is no longer taken for granted but seen in all its nuances from machine made elements to handcrafting. Devens’ material complements dramatically transform the environment into an architectural/sculptural whole.
Learned participants will lose all sense of time as they are engulfed by the unlimited variety of ideal aesthetic organizations that surround them. They are astonished by the number of aesthetic questions they ask themselves on the way to their comprehension of this larger aesthetic reality. This process, in which the senses are paramount and reason serves them, is the model for a life of continual and unending gratification. The process of viewing a Devens’ artwork is the paradigm for a life of continuous change, greater existential liberation, and a transformation of all of our material relationships.
- 1 Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p.139
- 2 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p.9
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* David Courtney [kunsthistoricus/kunstcriticus] publicatie galerie Arte Coppo, Verviers(B),
(Augustus September 1999):
THE FOURTH DIMENSION
The first dimension is height. The second dimension is width. The third dimension is depth. The fourth dimension is time. Time seems to be a perfect abstraction; at least, no one can hand you ten kilos of it. And yet, time is based in concrete material. Its very existence is generated by physical substance. A journey into Dre Devens's work is a reminder of how the understanding of art is a bodily experience of time or the fourth dimension. How?
The fourth dimension is a construction of the space/time continuum. A space is real enough. At this moment you are in an enclosed, measurable space or in the great, wide outdoors, the space that cosmologists fancy. To understand a space one needs to walk around in order to take in the height, the width, and the depth. This requires time (the fourth dimension) to do so. All four dimensions are unalterably linked. Any imagining of the first three without the fourth is the real abstraction, only an imagining, not physical reality.
Dre Devens's art brings home to the observer the opportunity to explore the aesthetic interdependence of the four dimensions in a perfected organization. We, the viewer, supply the time and thus become a constituent element of the work. What the aesthetic space looks like depends on where we stand in relation to it. If one is on the move, the artwork (of which the viewer is an essential element) gains kinesis from its constant change of appearance.
The artwork is no longer a stable thing in a particular place. It is a verb the way time is.
The genius of Dre Devens's work is his ability to understand the space and reinvent it, to idealize it. He transforms it into perfect form. He creates an architectonic utopia by the use of a sculptural Hermes that guides us to, and through, the space he helps define. Hermes may be the guide, but he is an essential element of the story.
In this halcyon space, we are reminded of the value of the aesthetic paradigm for our own lives. A life of euphoria must be one that is invented. No institution can or will give heaven to us. The painted steel poles, the walls, the floor and the viewer are all pieces of the work which have been synthesized into a realm of unexpected harmony. Each viewer is invited to employ these ingredients in the creation of a living paradise.
The viewer, as participatory aspect of the work, is invited to employ all the ways of knowing: emotions, thought, physical experience, and the analogy of past, like experiences.
The challenge for most sculptors is to make a thing which is perfect from every viewing angle. As viewers travel around the work, they discover each vantage point is, remarkably, different and wonderful. Dre Devens explodes the sculpture into the fourth dimension where we live. His art is a model (an indicator) of how all of our personal time could be.
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* citaat uit een tekst van Aloys van den Berk [museumconservator] (1994):
" .... De tekeningen, merendeels gemaakt met (kleur)potlood op wit papier in metalen lijsten, zijn geheel
tweedimensionaal doordat elke suggestie van de illusie van ruimte achterwege is gebleven. Zij komen voort uit Devens' wens in het proces van creëren de "chaos" zo veel mogelijk weg te "tekenen"."
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* citaat uit een tekst van Leo Stappers [dichter/kunstcriticus] (1993):
" .... Het koele uiterlijke karakter van dit werk staat in
contrast tot de emotionele lading ervan, die voortkomt
uit de manipulatie van de innerlijke ruimte, de dreigende chaos.
Manipulatie van de ruimte is voor Devens vooral: op basis van de objectieve ruimte een subjectieve formuleren.
Van binnen, in het hoofd."
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* citaat uit een tekst van Dan Holsbeek [kunsthistoricus/kunstcriticus] (1990):
"Het ordenen, een innerlijke noodzaak". Het denken van Dré Devens is doordrongen van ruimte: de metrische en de "leefruimte". Ruimte suggereert
beweging. Ze wordt pas zinvol wanneer ze ingevuld of gebruikt wordt. Dit zinvol maken en ervaren van een ruimte is louter subjectief. Voor Dre Devens is er een immanente correlatie tussen het benaderen van een metrische ruimte en het leven zelf als ruimte.
"Net zoals de mens er naar streeft met minimale veranderingen zijn leven maximaal te verbeteren,
zo poogt ook Devens met zo weinig mogelijk materiaal
een zo groot mogelijke beelding te verkrijgen."
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* citaat uit een tekst van Hans Janssen [museumconservator] (1988):
" ..., iets wat mij in hoge mate fascineert bij het kijken naar het werk van Dré. Het werk heeft een eigenaardige neiging om zich te onttrekken aan het ervaringsniveau waarvan wij ons dagelijks bedienen. Het blijft volledig in zichzelf besloten en los van de toeschouwer staan
terwijl het tegelijkertijd op lijkt te lossen in het licht van de ruimte en transparant wordt,..."
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* Dre Devens (19 ):
DE DISCIPLINE VAN DE EMOTIE
ruimte is subjectief.
het kan zijn: ruimte als plek,
een afgesloten ruimte;
maar ook: speelruimte,
een ruimte die niet begrensd is;
ook ruimte als het "nietszijn": een contradictie.
de ruimte als inspiratie bron.
voor mij is het belangrijk dat èn ruimte,
èn mijn toevoeging beide hun eigen waarde behouden.
niet alle aandacht moet uitgaan naar het kunstwerk,
maar ook niet naar het reeds eerder aanwezige.
beide moeten met elkaar te maken hebben, maar mogen niet in elkaar opgaan.
het contrast tussen beide moet bestaan, er moet duidelijkheid zijn.
het tegelijk afbakenen van de ruimte, maar ook uitstraling geven.
de ruimte wordt dus nu echt omgeving,
het dilemma ontstaat:
het object ansich.
het object opgaand in de omgeving.
de omgeving neemt het object in bezit.
het object bepaalt de omgeving.
de omgeving valt niet meer op.
de omgeving wordt geaccentueerd.
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* Attila Kovács, Cologne / Germany, (Oktober 1984)
- Translation: Jutta Weiner
Dré Devens Dutch Constructivist – Elements of Captured Light
Ritter Art Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida 33431
February 26 – March 30, 1985
and
Dolly Fiterman Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota
April 23 – June 18, 1985
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-62570
CONCERNING THE SCULPTURES BY DRE DEVENS:
Let this, for instance, be conceived:
Line + line in space,
line + line + plane in space,
grey + white,
grey + white + yellow,
45°, 90°, 135°,
1 + 1, 1 + 2 + 1,
side or diagonal of a square,
quarter-circle, a delicate regular part of a geometric figure, a solid or perforated,
i.e. partially transparent surface.
The idea is realized with industrial materials. Two scales are adjusted to one another:
that of the centimeter and that inherent in the chosen material, a perforated metal sheet for instance. It will be bent or cut, either exactly between perforations or along the center of the perforations. A rod will be bent at regular intervals or welded to another rod at regular intervals.
Precise – as Dré Devens prefers to express himself clearly.
In the visual organization a line, depending on its function, takes the material form of a rod or a rope. The function of support is visually strengthened by the use of a metal rod; the function of suspension is made delicate by the use of a rope. The rod chosen is no thicker than absolutely necessary for support, and the rope is not thicker than absolutely necessary to clearly indicate suspension.
"To make the visible invisible and the invisible visible" is how Dré Devens puts it. His idea is based on the consideration of the gravitation and the sturdiness of the material used. He realizes first a stabile spatial construction whose sculptural function is to serve as a base for a second construction. The second construction is suspended from the first. A stabile and a changeable construction stand and hang together so that their coherence constitutes a constellation.
Gravitation holds the stabile construction to the ground. The construction works against the forces of gravitation and thus makes possible the addition of the second, the suspension construction. Gravitation as a directed, and in this respect unchangeable attraction, determines the constellation.
One is immobile and static, the other moveable and changeable. Nevertheless, gravitation renders them unchangeable and immobile, but only temporarily – only until a more potent force than gravity affects the moveable suspended construction.
This kind of ambivalence constitutes the attractiveness of Dré Devens' work – stability and changeability, a fixed resistance in the constellation vs. the continuously present readiness for adjustment, the immobility of the constellations vs. potential motion, firmness and controlled moveability, and zero-motion.
The peculiar tension of these sculptures consists in their future, in each next moment. Either their two components retain their precisely formulated clarity, or they lose this clarity when their condition changes from an ordered, rational one to an unordered, irrational one as a result of some external force.
Constellations too, are only temporary.
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