Michaël Amy

Conversation with Peter Buggenhout

Michaël Amy:  Tell me, what is your work about?

Peter Buggenhout:  My goal is to achieve analogies for how I feel our world functions.  Imagine yourself on the train, entering Brussels, passing behind all those old houses that have been completely transformed over time.  New parts have been added to them, old parts have been torn down, a gabled roof has made way for a flat roof, windows with wood frames have been replaced by windows with plastic frames, and the design of the glass panes has changed.  Some window and door embrasures have been sealed shut.  New owners have modified these buildings in ways which were unforeseeable.  The same is true of the room we are standing in, which has become my studio: It has gone through a great many changes since it was built over one century ago.  It first served as the gym of this Neo-Gothic former boy’s school.  Then, it was transformed into a puppet theater.  Next, it became a neighborhood movie theater, and then, twenty years ago, it became my studio.   This space bears the marks of all these changes.  No one knows what transformation this space will undergo next.  Or take the sea: It washes over the shore, leaves something behind, rolls over the shore over and over again, gradually building up a beach.  Or take this conversation.  We jump from one point to another.  A conversation is unpredictable -it’s chaotic, one has no overview of it.  I am likewise inspired by this working class neighborhood I live in, where everything is in a state of flux.  The flux of reality is one of the principal subjects of my work.
I did not start out with this view of my work.  Instead, I discovered the subject of my work once I had produced quite a bit of sculpture.  I studied mathematics.  Math uses the language of symbols.  Images of things -which are, therefore, symbols of things- fail to seize the totality.  That’s why I use analogy.  Analogy stands so much closer to reality.  My work does not include the least bit of symbolism.  It is completely abstract. 
When we look at an image, we instinctively aim to recognize something in it.  My sculptures do not escape this entirely natural impulse on the part of the beholder.  However, my works are built up in such a way that each impression one has of what one sculpture could refer to is dismantled as one walks around the work.  Once you have finished walking around one of my sculptures, you cannot but conclude that it resembles nothing other than itself.
The materials I use are all abject: Dust, stomachs, innards, blood, hair.  These materials lose their form and meaning once they are removed from their original context.  Once this is achieved, these things become repellent.  The act of reading symbols, which is ingrained in all of us, makes us overlook the actual appearance of the object.  By dismantling this tendency of ours to work with symbols, I bring the viewer back to the object itself, and all its inherent qualities which symbolism bypasses.  That is why I work with abject materials.  Bataille said the abject was invented in order to declassify things.  One declassifies by ignoring symbolism.

MA:  I see connections between some of your sculpture and 1950’s art informel. 

PB:  Yes, and no.  Some critics have described my works as the archeological finds of the future -which is only one among many possible interpretations of my work.  I never speak of a correct or incorrect interpretation, as these categories disappear.  My sculpture defies categorization.  Each interpretation of my work needs to be toppled.  I aim to return to sculpture as object, as thing.  I do not aim for an exploration of sculpture as a system of forms.  Witness the different venues where my work has been shown.  My sculpture can function as an ethnographic object, an archeological find, a work of art, or a thing produced by nature. 

MA:  How do you produce the sculptures whose surfaces are covered with the stomach of a cow?

PB:  The stomachs are handled while moist.  They are wet when they come back from the tanners.  I stretch a stomach over a core.  This core may have any form whatsoever –I sometimes even use the remains of my wife’s sculpture, such as fiberglass molds, to produce the skeletons for my sculpture.  Or, I may use polyurethane foam or polystyrene as the basic shape, which I then cover up with blood, dust or a cow’s stomach   I do not aim for a particular form.
The objects I use as the core for my sculpture are likewise abject, as they are removed from their original context.  They thereby lose their meaning and are looked upon with aversion.  All of these found objects are things I happen upon, independent of aesthetic considerations.  Instead, I am interested in these objects’ architectonic suitability.  As I often say, if I need to plant a nail in a wall and do not have a hammer, then a number of objects appear before me as suitable alternatives.  The objects that constitute the core of my sculptures are suitable in this way.

MA:  How did you arrive at the idea of using blood, stomachs and innards?

PB:  My father-in-law is a butcher.  I am interested in how things grow from inside outwards -like a child, or like a seed that turns into a tree.  I am interested in unpredictability -that’s what my work is in large measure about, the trajectory of forms, thoughts, ideas, feelings.  Then again, there are forms, thoughts, ideas, feelings that are shaped from the outside.  This led me to the dust-works.  Dust falls upon things.  It changes the form and meaning of things.  Dust covers the original form like a blanket which -as Picasso noted- is the gentlest possible protection for an object.  Picasso let dust lie all over the place.  Did you know that in the 19th century, dust was left to swirl in the corners of houses?  Dust was considered an intermediary between a known and an unknown world.

MA:  How do you obtain these materials?

PB: The dust is gathered from the vacuum cleaners of cleaning companies.  The hair comes from the tails of horses.  I began making the blood-works, and the hair sculptures, two years ago.  The blood is obtained from slaughterhouses and treated with preservatives.  My studio becomes a terrible mess when I work on the blood sculptures.  Many of these sculptures need to be discarded because they fail to communicate.  Those are the most difficult sculptures to produce, as they are subject to so much change over time.  How do you handle what is unpredictable? –you cannot control it.  Each truth is variable.  I am interested in how we handle what is unpredictable.  I am interested in actions that cannot be controlled.  In my work, I unleash chaos.  My blood-sculptures, in particular, are very intuitive and visceral -a sort of manipulation of what is unpredictable.  My sculptures do not require preparatory drawings or models.  I work on a bunch of sculptures simultaneously.  My sculptures are acts of improvisation.  They have their point of origin in my confidence in my worldview.

MA:  Your works are titled.

PB:  The dust-works all receive the same title: The Blind Leading the Blind, followed by a number.  Louise Bourgeois gave that title to one of her works.  The title goes back to Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting of that parable at the Capodimonte in Naples.  The blind do not know where they come from, or where they are going. 
The blood-works are all titled Gorgo, which refers back to Medusa.  Perseus used his shield as a mirror to see Medusa and slay her.  A mirror of reality: That is the beginning of the art of painting.  The recent sculptures with innards are all titled Mont Ventoux, after Petrarch.  Petrarch wanted to catalogue the world he saw in front of him, but overlooked the very mountain he stood upon.  You need distance in order to classify things.  The titles are not tied to the appearance of the sculptures.  Instead, they reflect my way of seeing the world.

MA:  When do you know when a sculpture is finished?  How can we tell whether or not a sculpture is successful?

PB:  The sculpture must be completely abstract.  It must be devoid of all symbolic content.  It is only finished once it has a personality that is very much its own.  Like people, each sculpture must develop a different character. 
When is the work finished, you ask?  It probably never is.  I just stop working on it at a given moment.  I compare this process to meeting someone on a street: You begin the conversation by exchanging pleasantries, and depending on the situation you find yourself in, you feel after five, ten, fifteen or twenty minutes that it is time to call it a day.  The same is true of these sculptures.  Things are not systematically planned.

MA:  A somber mood pervades your work.  Your sculpture brings up themes of breakdown and abandonment.

PB:  I am not sure you are right.  The opposite may be true.  I let the viewer decide.  Destruction leads ultimately to reconstruction, in the same way that dead leaves nurture trees, come the spring.  We are confronted to a constant back and forth.  The situation is in flux.  A wide range of connections can be made.

MA:  You began as a painter.

PB:  I painted until 1990 and then stopped altogether because painting is always symbolic.  Painting is not a concrete object.  I needed five years to learn how to make sculpture.  I began working with the stomachs and innards in 1995.

MA:  Tell me again: Why do you feel this need to reject all symbolism from your work?

PB:  It’s an obsession of mine.  I want to make something that is a part of reality -like a person.   I want to arrive at something that allows for greater interaction.  I aim for the sense of wonder.  I want to confront reality -not representations of things.  From the moment the work refers to something else, it becomes symbolic.  

MA:  What art do you feel drawn to?

PB:  I am interested in West African art.  I am deeply interested in the works produced by the Dogon and the Bambara people.  Nboli statues fascinate me.  I am also mesmerized by Buddhist scholar stones.  Those stones are removed from nature and dated to the year when they receive their bases.  I have closer links to these kinds of expression than to any other art.  Art fails to inspire me, as ninety-nine percent of it is symbolic.

MA:  But African sculpture is not without symbolic content.

PB:  The symbolism of Nboli statues disappears as the offers accrue.  Although the statues are initially fraught with signs and symbols, a transformation takes place as a result of ritual performances.  Both the original statue and its meaning are encapsulated in the materials of ritual.  Only those who are initiated recognize the symbolism of the statue.  BUT THIS IS TRUE OF ALL ART THAT IS SYMBOLIC –YOU HAVE TO KNOW THE MEANING OF THOSE SYMBOLS.  Those who are not initiated, on the other hand, find themselves confronted to a fascinating mystery.  Some Dogon statues become formless and unrecognizable as they are covered with the many offers that are made to them.

MA:  Which books inspire you?

PB:  Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi (Life : A User’s Manual, 1978), Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (Die Ringe des Saturn, 1995).  The rings are composed of fragments of a moon that came too close to Saturn and exploded.  The particles of the destroyed moon may yet come back together again to form a new moon.  Coming too close to the truth is dangerous.  It may lead to destruction, which leads to rebuilding.
Perec’s book is unreadable, although you cannot let go of it.  You can jump into it anywhere you want.  For Perec, life amounts to a long enumeration.  The book describes an apartment building, with all of its inhabitants and all of their belongings.  It’s a completely amorphous situation.  That book comes so very close to reality.  It isn’t nihilistic.  It isn’t negative or condescending.  Instead, it speaks of great feeling for life.  Sebald also has great love for people.  These writers know how people react, and how they function.  My dust-sculptures seize life itself.  They are filled with particles of people -mainly cells and hair- and are chockfull of traces of the environments these people live in.