The Anthropology of Beauty and Utility
are compositions of branches placed in the country side and, in that sense, are evocative of Land Art. There is a real chance of a bird coming and sitting on one of these ‘objects’. But it is only by reading the title that you realise that Buedts also attributed that ‘function’ to the works. In Buedts’ late works, there is still an ambiguous relationship between language and object, between functional object and work of art. There is a series of easels, for example : on the one hand, they are
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abstract compositions of chalked, upright wooden slats ; on the other, they are also simply the functional object their title implies. A work such as L adder con sists of a beam placed at an angle with equally spaced chalk lines drawn on it, a two-dimensional ladder as it were. The series of works each entitled Cloud includes an object consisting of a number of wooden blocks placed on a horizontal beam. As the object is generally set up outside, at first sight it looks like an improvised garden bench. Another object with
‘Het atelier van het landschap’, juni 2008 : Beeldhouwwerken van Raphaël Buedts en gedichten van Roland Jooris, Kalken (Kalkense Meersen)
‘The Landscape Studio’, June 2008 : Sculptures by Raphaël Buedts and poems by Roland Jooris, Kalken (Kalkense Meersen) Schildersezel [Painter’s Easel], 2007 Gemengde houtsoorten / Mixed wood types, 197 cm (h) Privécollectie / Private collection