Page 52 - Studio International - June 1969

Paris emerged during those years (and which I With the present series of sculptures, Pol Bury
discussed in the June 1965 issue of Studio has introduced a new motory principle, mag-
commentary International)—balls moving on inclined planes, netism, into some of his work, and a new
and massed rods or stamens activated against material, metal, into all of it. Metal is at
vertical planes— could be seen most easily out- present the only material he uses for any of the
Simon Watson Taylor side France: at the Venice Biennale (1964, component parts of his constructions, and the
Belgian Pavilion), in New York (1964, 1966 polished or burnished surfaces of his finely-
and 1968), and in London (Kasmin, 1967). worked and beautifully finished brass, copper
His work also entered a number of public and stainless steel planes and volumes have
collections outside France: the Museum of entirely replaced the range of naturally-
Modern Art and the Tate, for example, both grained or tinted oaks and mahoganies he has
possess splendid large-scale examples of the used hitherto (with the exception, I think, of
series comprising forests of nylon threads one unusually menacing sculpture of 1963, a
RECENT WORK BY POL
tipped with tiny blobs of colour which seethe lunar surface of pitted iron craters from whose
BURY AT GALERIE
and flick against a vertical wooden back- jagged rims viciously sharp lances probed and
MAEGHT
ground. scratched at the air). The use of polished
There are, however, no works by Pol Bury as metal allows an additional factor to enter into
yet in French public collections, and the the play of the moving pieces: reflection.
French visitor to the present exhibition will, Each concave, convex or curved plane be-
perforce, have only the recollection of Pol comes a reflector of the constantly changing
Bury's contributions to the 1964 and 1966 patterns of the pieces, which themselves reflect
Salon de Mai as mental points of reference, in each other's shapes as they approach, recede,
Pol Bury's sculptures in their various guises orienting them towards the highly idiosyn- touch or jostle. Reflective properties become
(or disguises) have always contrived to live an cratic spectacle which confronts them (and an essential rather than a supplementary
isolated, almost secret life of their own. In the which beckons them tantalizingly). Not that aspect of the sculpture in works such as the
presence of other sculptures they set up an it is absolutely necessary to have followed the 10 ft high stainless steel column shaped like a
almost hostile field of tension, as though development of the artist's thought in order to huge capital C, in which the steel cylinders
demanding not only space for their restless enjoy the experience of these recently created nestling in the sharply curved base are in-
activities but undivided attention. structures, but certainly an additional dimen- visible except from very close up, and only the
Although Pol Bury took part in the seminal sion of pleasure can result from the realization elongated reflections of their moving shapes
exhibition organized by Denise Rene in 1955 that a remarkable continuity of thought has can be seen agitating the column's slightly
under the title 'Le Mouvement', the rotating presided over the gradual morphological concave surface.
coloured planes which he showed on that evolution of the forms throughout successive Where the moving pieces consist of elements
occasion, in the company of work by Agam, exhibitions. projecting horizontally from vertical planes,
Soto, Tinguely, Vasarely and others, repre- The concept underlying Pol Bury's work (a or balls resting on inclined planes, they are
sented only the tentative beginnings of his concept that is poetic as much as formally necessarily attached to these surfaces by con-
investigations into the possibility of defining plastic) has remained constant: the trans- cealed wires under varying tension. Where
plastically the movement of volumes in space formation of associated geometrical or curvi- the pieces are resting on a flat, horizontal
and the interaction of these associated linear objects into seemingly viable entities surface, however, and the kind of motion
volumes. By 1962, when he shared the exhibi- capable of organic relationships, through an required from them involves neither gravity-
tion called 'Structures vivantes' at the Galerie instillation of energy derived from a concealed defying feats nor movement around a fixed
Diderot with Soto and Takis, the first results mechanical source. Since growth in nature is base, Pol Bury makes use of electromagnetic
of these explorations of the subtle kinetic essentially gradual and non-repetitive, its energy for the first time. The results are
relationship which motorized energy might simulation by mechanical means involves not fascinating. Using bodies which have good
establish between a ball and a cube, or only the simple problem of providing a suffi- reflective properties and will move either
between rods clustered against a plane surface, ciently slow transmission, but the relatively freely or with minimal friction over a flat sur-
already seemed to demand a separate, con- complex problem of incorporating elements face — spheres, cylinders, hemispheres balancing
templative involvement on the part of the of hazard (baffle-plates, meshes, springs, etc.) on their bases—he has produced a whole new
spectator; the sense of slow, organic growth, to allow the motive power to exercise a more range of potential kinetic relationships. The
underscored by a faint creaking, clicking or or less indirect control over the concealed magnets which trace their paths just under the
twanging, emanating from these structures terminals of the individual units —balls, cubes, surface of the platforms activate the rolling or
made them 'alive' in a way that was scarcely cylinders, rods, stamens—which constitute the sliding pieces with a slowness as subtly inde-
applicable to the retinal illusion of movement moving parts of the construction. terminate as that produced hitherto by
produced by Soto's hanging rods or the The aura of mystery surrounding the sculp- mechanical transmission. The 'element of
powerful spatial tensions of Takis's 'magnetic tures derives partly from the secret nature of hazard' here is twofold. The paramagnetic
ballets'. all this mechanical but seemingly random material inside the brass or copper shells
Pol Bury has lived and worked in Paris since activity. The concealed power betrays itself consists of free-moving steel balls, subject
1961, when he left his native Belgium. It is a only by the scarcely perceptible motion of the simultaneously to the pull of the rotating mag-
measure of the extent to which his plastic moving parts and the slight noise they make nets and the gravitational counter-pull of
researches have remained apart from the as they knock or brush up against each other their own curvilinear housings. And this
mainstream of Paris-based artistic activity or roll along the surface to which they are disturbance of the programmed polarization
during this decade that the exhibition of his attached by invisible threads alternately is enhanced by the interaction of the pieces as
most recent work, which opened at the slackening and tightening. Sometimes a they strike each other, spin each other round
Galerie Maeght on April 29, provided the barely audible groaning, creaking or whin- by their circular rims, mass together, rebound.
French with their first opportunity to see his ing, emanating from the motor's pulleys and Sometimes the process can scarcely be detected
sculpture on its own and in extenso since 1963. rotating plates, serves as a supplementary by a keen and patient eye, and only the gradu-
The two main series of sculptures which orchestration. ally shifting reflections show that the elements