Light and Fire

While wandering the cobbled stoned streets of Bruges we came upon an open gate and I caught a glimpse of a glossy gilded statue which seemed out of place next to an old house.  The old house turned out to be the Gezellemuseum, the house where Guido Gezelle, Flemish priest and poet, was born in 1830.

The statue and accompanying poetry turned out to be created by Jan Fabre, a multidisciplinary Belgian artist, born in 1958.  His art in the 1980’s included burning money from the ticket sales of one of his first solo shows and writing ART in the ashes, making drawings with his own blood and locking himself in a white cube and drawing with Bic pens.

His art in 2016 brought criticism in Russia when a Fabre exhibit at the Hermitage featured stuffed animals in strange poses.  This outcry was probably prompted by his filming in 2012 of cats being hurled spinning high in the air and landing hard on pavement.  His film technicians put a stop to the filming.

The statue is one of four statuary representations of Jan Fabre in full size–the first erected in Bruges.

When the original sculpture was inaugurated in the Gezelle Museum in Bruges on occasion of the Gezelle year in 1999, Fabre told us : “Just like I have received the fire form Gezelle through images in his poems, just so do I hope to hand over the torch to other people’.

The statue is shoeless and the shoes are on a pedestal separate from the statue.  Was it a visual representation of the American saying:  Stepping into one’s shoes?

I’ve always been interested in the connection of art and science and this month in Brussels Fabre opened an exhibit entitled: Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart?  This work is the result of collaboration with Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatt who received worldwide acclaim after discovering mirror neurons, the scientific explanation for empathy.

In a playful video, the result of their collaboration, they discuss what connects and what distinguishes them. “The link between a good scientist and a good artist is that they both dare to jump into the unknown,” Fabre tells me.

A scientist who does not take risks is nothing more than an accountant.  No risks, no poetry!

– JAN FABRE