A long, swinging cord, attached to the ceiling, connects a heavy granite block with a life-size photograph of the artist.
Photo(s): Wim Riemens
The sculpture does not develop out of a centre, as in the classic practice of sculpture, but in time and space, along the rising and falling line of rope, from the stone to the photograph flat on the ground. Arrangement and dimensions are not prescribed; they are dependent on the place where the sculpture is set up. The manner in which the work was installed in 1982 at the Provincial Museum in Hasselt and in De Vleeshal in Middelburg can be regarded as normative. The photograph of the artist seen from the back is the same as in different variants of Jump 1981. The beeswax round the photograph refers to a citation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses ( “flavam modo pollice ceram/ mollibat…” VIII, 231-2). The motif of the rope anchored to a block of stone, witch hinders flight, previously is found in the collage L’Uomo Volante 1975-79. The Icarus motif appears in various guises in the work of Boezem. From several rough drafts working out the idea (Boezem Archive), it appears that in place of the thick Manilla rope, originally a 4 cm wide white ribbon was considered, which ran through space like a graph. The work was inspired by the famous photograph “Saute dans le vide” (1960) of Yves Klein doing a nosedive (photo by Shunk and Kender; appeared on the front page of Dimanche, November 27, 1960).
exhibitions
tags: marinus boezem
