Press

Insight into the work of Geert Vanderborght

Tentoonstelling “The heart of the matter”, oktober – december 2007

Otto Ganz, October 2007

The impressive thing in Geert Van der Borght's work is his way of working that leads to a progressive reduction of reality in order to reach a universe where the forms say nothing but this very powerful feeling that the meeting of materials crosses the subjects.

If the departure of creation is symbolistic, animated by a “desire to say,” as evidenced by titles, elements of recycling or more specific works, the sculptor's idea soon becomes clearer and the true creative act arises.

By means of introspection, the artist erodes the original image: the mind sorts the excess, performs a work of reduction in order to maintain - completely meaningful - only a discourse of forms between them.

Origins argument already for the concept of origin, attraction to what precedes the object, the language, the meaning. The artist returns to the most identifying aspect of the work: the dialogue of informed forms before the combinations are removed from the magma by an imperative or technical necessity.

Thought goes back in time to return to that front of the word, a time when everything was just an encounter of entities from which our instruments, our needs, and our words will spring. And that is undoubtedly the knot of Geert Van der Borght's work, when all justifications or poetic interpretations have been overcome: in a dialogue.

Here the observation of this introspective, almost contemplative sculpture leads: in a place where the meaning, self-assembled, disappears for each of the parts, indicating that in each of the parts it never ceases to reveal itself in its entirety. The knife is born from a handle, from a blade, the sheath… .. From the meeting of two forms that have always existed before for this precise coupling, the object appears. In this silent universe, back to a pre-meaning vision, the boundaries between bodies, the masses, are informed.

Each work is animated in terms of armholes, pinholes, interlocking, visual and tactile sounds, dialectics: conception of an informed material already containing all forms, awaiting their emergence.

This discourse intimidates another: that of the identity of the material itself. The tactile questioning instinctively brings the viewer into the necessary doubts that any work that “stimulates” the senses entails. Truth is not the product of a single feeling or emotion, even if it makes sense. Contemplation is not enough for a meaningful discourse: this performative word drives the spectator to surprise and, more importantly, to doubt. What if the observed object, decoded, remains unknown in truth simply because it is impossible to identify the materials in terms of materials? Imagine the feeling that passes through your fingers as they lift a granite pavement with the impulse and supposedly necessary force and discover that the pavement is made of hollow porcelain? What can we believe when our logical perception of density is distorted? What is there left to believe? Furthermore, the eye misleads us, because the meaning is further away: identity itself, in a discourse of origin, is subordinate.

Exhibition “Step Inside”, October 2004 - February 2005

Jean-Phillipe Goffaux

Geert Van der Borght achieves a sublimation of matter. He plays with the lines of force that extend into the fragile theater of the earth. The expression is informal or vice versa. The first meaning, use value or other recognition is contained in the epiphenomena, as if pushed out. In this way he manages to escape the degradation of phenomena to the observed ……

Indeed, there is no way to copy the materials in our preformed psychic colorings, nor any way to subordinate them to some primary signer. The materials are resistant, they undermine the shape from the inside, are resistant to packaging.

The phenomenal game is all the freer… ..

The earth, wood and metal question their balance.

In his compositions in which opposing forces are embedded, their playing produces an urge, a diffuse radiation, hardly contained. An aura is created that seems to precede any mental obstruction, as if we have scratched the formal film of our anxiety, stripped our perception in order to reach the living forces.

This experience of phenomenology is promoted by the artist in other ways, notably through hyperrealism. It not only imitates the shape, but also the texture of the amazing effect! Because it is a trap, and all the more powerful because it covers a greater proportion of the formations that we casually project through its use.

The veil of our imagination is destined to dissolve in the goldsmith's trade at the psychic destination. The separation between the raw object and the real crosses the mind and puts us in the present, bewildered, in the experience of direct perception.

We come back amazed, as if a master had placed an object transcending time in our path.

Ghislain Olivier (Time edition)

“Because of the deceptive manifestations that matter can take, Geert Van der Borght opens different doors to meditation, contemplation, the awakening of the senses and thus to knowledge.

The use of different baking materials, techniques and colors refers to our own general perception. In reality fire, earth, pigment, classifications are exploding. So the object takes on an unexpected force.

After the pleasant surprise effect, the spectator takes part in a total lighting effect that only great artists, both technicians and philosophers, can provide. GV thus offers a form of sensuality that offers the possibility to expand the space through shape and color.