hand hammered copper, 12 x 5 x 4,6 m (39 x 16 x 17 ft)
Marius Ritiu, Somewhere under the sky (Sisyphus Part VIII)
The fiction, non-fiction and science-fiction of objects that come crashing in from a sky that
might not just be, let alone have, a ceiling, is what provides the copper-centric sculptures from
Marius Ritiu’s ongoing Sisyphus series with its proper myth. Conceived for the citywide exhibition
Finish Terrae, coordinated by Galerie Geukens & DeVil: Somewhere under the sky (Sisyphus Part VIII),
the latest and eighth instalment of these stone from space look-a-likes was assigned a spot in the
garden of Antwerp’s cathedral. It is not just the sculpture itself – which this time looks less like a
compressed asteroid than a cartoon of a Serra struck by lightning – that adds to the vocabularium
of the former works in the series, but also the site specifically and the inescapable church in
contrast that deepens Ritiu’s exploration of scale’s suspense. Technically the inverse of the
“overview effect” – the apparently life-changing experience of witnessing the earth from above,
so small among at-least-greater space – Gothic churches, of which Antwerp’s cathedral is a
perfect sample, were built to convey this exact sense of “being taken higher”, of squeezing
individually insignificant lives in God’s greater plan. Your eyes following the tower forever-up
meant you disappearing with it. The incredible and stone-defying detailing of the cathedral’s
exterior is by no means a match with Ritiu’s belief in the motion-blur of Doing It Yourself.
Rather than perfect artistry, here’s artistry with perfect ends to it.
Dedicating a practice, you could say, to a boredom of borders, the artistic paradox Ritiu seems to
deal with is that it takes gigantesque blockages, borderline invasions in cramped galleries or
crowded public spaces, to show that we are little, and art is little, and perhaps all is relative. That
seen from infinite spots, we don’t make sense, art doesn’t make sense and perhaps nothing
remains. I guess the relativity of it all does the vice-versa here justice. And to think somewhere in
all this nullifying still stands the Sisyphus-y promise that there will always be yet another stone
ready to pop out of nowhere.
Nikolaas Verstraeten