José Vermeersch: Presences
Lilou Vidal, Laura McLean-Ferris, Dieter Roelstraete, Rik Vermeersch
Ludion, 2022
€40,00
Belgian Artist José Vermeersch (1922-1997) is known for his ceramic sculptures of heterogeneous figures. Yet he was also a painter, weaver and designer, who created a rich oeuvre that was steeped in his passion for humans, animals and life.
This book pays tribute to the origin of Vermeersch’s figurative work and shows the special way in which his pictorial and ceramic work is interwoven with each other on the basis of a hundred sculptures and paintings. The indefinite and non-intele character of Vermeersch’s oeuvre-from gender to species (humans/animal)-is deepened together with ideas such as sustainability and fragility.
Presences reveals a series of unpublished photos from the artist’s archive, in which we see him at work in his studio or at the two wood-fired ovens that he built for himself. Unique photos that testify to the patience and the care with which Vermeersch made his sculptures. He left his clay figures, lie or sit, quietly waiting for the alchemy of the natural elements to effect. Vermeersch’s work shows a certain slowness and a strong affinity with a specific place and with nature. It is precisely because of this that his work seems to be more than ever in line with the current focus on sustainable and autonomous production processes.
ISBN: 9789493039803
