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Wim Van Mulders
accommodates the bird. The bird inhabits it but, at the same time, doesn’t live in it. The elementary con structions show the place where the being of the bird ranges. The structures are dwellings and instruments of the closeness and distance of the bird : It flies unerr ingly beneath a vaulted sky. The enigmatic Furniture for a Bird stands at the fringe of a mysterious world for which every description pales into insignificance. In Orlando, Virginia Woolf evokes the absurd image of the snapping, cackling talking bird because her char acters are stranded in despair and incomprehension : “Life ! Life ! Life ! the bird calls, as if understanding it .” The furniture suggests the movements of birds, which, paradoxically, hang frozen in the air. Furniture For a Bird was executed in 1986 for Ghent’s Chambres d’Amis exhibition, where it unfor tunately didn’t receive the appreciation it deserved. It consisted solely of branches, without a single screw or nail. The branch sculptures folded in and towards the public space and lived in absolute temporality. As was intended, the artist destroyed all the works after the exhibition.
Houtaarde One of the highlights of the long-time collaboration between the poet Roland Jooris and Raf Buedts was the bibliophilic publication Houtaarde [Wood Earth].10 The meticulously executed book contains five wood cuts and five poems.
z.t. [Untitled], 2008 Krijt en potlood op papier / Chalk and pencil on paper, 29,7 x 21 cm Privécollectie / Private collection
z.t. [Untitled], 2007 Potlood, acryl en krijt op papier / Pencil, acrylic, and chalk on paper, 64 x 45 cm Privécollectie / Private collection
Like an instinct nosing through wood earth like a splinter lighting its painful flame like a sharpness touching his skin in the shavings
10. Raphaël Buedts and Roland Jooris, Houtaarde, (Ghent : Octave de Achtste and Ergo Pers, 2000). Houtaarde was published in a run of forty-eight copies, each of which was signed by the authors.