From Mike Powell’s long jump world record to the racist police blunder on Tamir Rice, passing by the forbidden backflip of skater Surya Bonaly: so many historical movements that the visual artist and choreographer Pierre Larauza reconstructs in sculpture like a documentary filmmaker.
In his “documentary sculptures”, Pierre Larauza, Doctor of Art and Art Sciences, strives to reproduce physical movements that have particularly marked him. Whether it is a record movement, a choreographic invention, a forbidden movement or a racist movement, his works question the physical gesture through art, linking history, homage and fights. .
The exhibition offers a unique look at the artist’s work by laying bare the process of decomposing movement and the investigative work carried out in the development of the works, which combine testimonies, interviews, archival documents and fragments. life-size sculptures.
A poetic approach to the body in motion to discover at the Forum des Halles in Louvain-la-Neuve.
Documentary sculptures
With this research, the French artist develops a three-dimensional work deeply rooted in reality: a process that he qualifies as “documentary sculpture”. This critical work of investigation of reality takes the form of life-size historical reconstructions reproducing the trajectory of mass-mediatized physical movements that have particularly marked him: from a cult sporting gesture to a racist police blunder. Iconic movements symbols of invincibility, inventiveness, iniquity or even prohibition. According to a process of decomposition of the movement and a work of investigation (meeting of the protagonists, analysis of archives…), his works freeze in space-time an emblematic second of these events. Whether it is a record movement, a choreographic invention, a forbidden movement or a racist movement, these sculptures evolve over the course of the investigations carried out, transforming the works into processes and, conversely, these processes. in works.
Attached to the participatory dimension for some of his works, Pierre Larauza has, for example, created for the city of Brussels a lasting urban sculpture at the crossroads of art, sport and documentary. Inaugurated in September 2021 in the presence of Mike Powell, this artworks allows everyone to measure themselves against the excess of the long jump world record.
Pierre Larauza is also involved in university research: his doctoral thesis in Art and Art Sciences thus questions the intersection between sculpture and a documentary approach. Through the hypothesis of a “neo-factual plastic narrative”, he analyzes the aesthetic and critical issues of such a three-dimensional practice of investigating reality.
Pierre Larauza has also published on the spectatorial hybridity of dance in the museum (Geuthner, 2019) or on the syncretic approach of Cindy Sherman (Koregos, 2020). Speaking outside the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (modules 2016 and 2018), he has also been involved since 2016 in a transcultural project in Vietnam whose ambition is to build a long-term base of experiences and of non-ethnocentric reflections. In this context, he gives installation and sculpture workshops at the University of Fine Arts in Ho Chi Minh City.
February 20, 1998, Nagano
October 20, 1968, Mexico
Pierre Larauza
Artistic director and co-founder of the Belgian-based contemporary dance company t.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e with the dancer and choreographer Emmanuelle Vincent. Since 2003, they have explored the movement through contemporary hybrid forms, crossing disciplines in a multicultural approach. Their performances and films have been performed or exhibited worldwide in more than 26 countries.
Currently Php student at Université Libre de Bruxelles and Paris 1, his areas of study are “Artistic practice of historical reenactment”, “Choreographic immersion in museums” and what he calls “Documentary sculpture”: his main research where he develops in sculpture the reenactments of historical body movements (sport movement or human interest stories).
Larauza’s first publication is currently being published: an article dedicated to the analysis the contemporary museum mutation through four choreographic variations experimented at the Hô-chi-minh-city Museum of Fine Arts in Vietnam. A second article in progress is about the syncretic dimension that Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Films Stills (1977-1980) maintains on several levels with cinema.
Beside his creations and theoretical researches, Larauza is also co-founder of Máy xay sinh tố, an interdisciplinary and transcultural laboratory based in Vietnam founded in 2016 with the artists Emmanuelle Vincent and Thy Nguyen Truong Minh in association with the University of Fine Arts in Hô Chi Minh City and more recently the art school ERG.
Researcher, sculptor, set designer, choreographer, filmmaker or even performer, Larauza’s roles intertwine and the concept of specialization gradually fades away to nourish his interest for in(ter)disciplinary approach. Hybridity imposes itself naturally in Larauza’s practice and theoretical research.
pierrelarauza.net
Check also
30 août 1991, Tokyo – Pierre Larauza @ La Nuit Blanche Paris (Fr)
Des mouvements que je n’aurais jamais pu faire – Pierre Larauza ! | Tour à plomb (Be)
Focus t.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e – Exposition + événement – Jacques Franck (Be)
Informations
- 28.09 > 02.11.2023
Opening : 28/09 | 18:00 - Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m.
- Forum des Halles – Galerie des Halles
- Place de l’Université 1, Louvain-la-Neuve
- Free entrance
- uclouvain.be/culture
20 février 1998, Nagano
- UCLouvain Culture – Arts & Science. With the support of Transcultures.
- The work of Pierre Larauza is, among others, supported by: CiAsp Research Center, Transcultures, European Pepinieres of Création et t.r.a.n.s.i.t.s.c.a.p.e
- transitscape.net – transcultures.be – pepinieres.eu
