reviews PETER ROGIERS
Peter rogiers: slAgroom
RObERTS & TIlTOn, lOS AnGElES
8 SEPTEm bER – 6 OcTObER
For this, his first exhibition in Los Angeles, Belgian
sculptor Peter Rogiers claims to have toned down
the visceral primordial wildness of his forms in
order not to startle his new American audience.
If this unsettling sculptural rogue’s gallery is tame,
then the feral version must be something to behold
indeed. In a general sense, Rogiers’s penchant for
making sculptures using epoxy and polyurethane
foam in copious unruly mounds is downright
playful; motion, gravity, exuberant gesture and the
chance operations of environmental factors are all
welcome. Slagroom is the Dutch word for ‘whipped
cream’, and that frothy, fluffy, frivolous matter
is exactly what many passages in these forms
resemble. The eponymous Slagroom (2006–7)
is also the most powerful piece in the exhibition.
One of the few left white (most others are painted
monochrome dark pea-green), it is also one of the
smaller, but it owns the universal savoury surprise
of Rogiers’s sculptures, which is the easy grace
with which they resolve themselves into legible
figures straight away. A walking man, the bulk of
whose flesh and bones is swathed in a thick spun-
sugar halo of frozen clouds that both clings to and
emanates from his body, the figure’s feet are as
firmly planted in the mottled, craggy ground of his
pedestal/base as tree trunks, yet his form exudes
the momentum of motion.
Another small work, Dancing Fool (2007),
evinces this same stationary dynamism, using a
format more familiar to followers of the artist’s work.
A single figure strikes an airborne pose supported
by an iron rod that connects to a circular base. Its
smoothly surreal legs and richly textured torso
evoke in both theme and form the primitivised
dancers of Matisse. In a way, this and all Rogiers’s work pursues the same ongoing art- Sandman, 2006–7, epoxy, polyester, iron,
polyurethane varnish, paint, 128 x 158 x 136 cm.
historical dust-up between abstraction and representation that plagued Matisse more
courtesy Roberts & Tilton, los Angeles, and Tim
than 100 years ago. Curiously, that tension exists in Rogiers’s eye not only as a direct result
Van laere Gallery, Antwerp
of art history but as the legacy of his personal experiences as a professional motorcycle
racer whose travels and occasional crashes have indelibly influenced his understanding
of how the eye perceives form in motion and how details emerge from visual chaos.
Many of the larger works, especially Sandman (2006–7), make this fascination
with variable modes of seeing more explicit. Intended to be installed outside, these
sculptures are built to withstand the elements and the caresses of curious fingers, and
to be viewed from as many different angles as possible. Proximity yields rich rewards
in Rogiers’s work, especially in details of the transitional passages between smooth and
crunchy elements. In a very real sense, the experience of sharing space with these figures
is evocative of their multidimensional inspiration and the time and motion invested in
their making. Once you get to know them, you realise there’s nothing frothy or frivolous
about them at all. Shana Nys Dambrot
203 Artreview
November_REVIEWS.indd 203 26/9/07 13:43:13
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