Laurent Impeduglia (Belgium, 1974) is a hyperactive builder. His
artworks range from funny drawings on paper, through wild oil on canvas
works, to tiny sculptures and huge installations: the thread that links them
is the artist's obsessive, compulsive relationship with the act of
construction and arrangement. Bricks, working tools (overalls, stones,
concrete mixers, wheelbarrows, and so forth) are used - either the real
objects themselves, slightly transformed, or simply drawn on paper or
painted - to build cheap castles, burning churches or collapsing igloos.
Impeduglia presents to us a world where a DIY philosophy is as
important as the final production; a world where works “in progress” are
as or more significant than finished objects. A world in which not only
the object in question but the artist/builder's life itself is being
constructed.
Humour is also very present in Impeduglia's work. He stages himself as
the happy worker, at times writing droll slogans that could almost
function as proverbs (“Where are you jesus” - with no question mark!), at
times presenting us with objects which invite us to travel but which
appear so precarious, so treaxcherous, that we would never dare use
them. Witness his unsettling wooden raft that simply proclaims “Quitter
Liège” on its proudly floating black flag, wherever it stands. Everything
here is about moving, traveling, drifting, finding a path. In the artist’s
own words, as daubed on a number of canvases: “Make a wish, build
your life”.
For his first show in Berlin, Impeduglia is exhibiting a large selection of
new works in the gallery-showroom Bongout, as if freshly made in his
huge studio. The word VITRIOL has recently become an important topic
for Impeduglia, accompanying his moving from the point of constructing
objects to the idea of reconstructing yourself. VITRIOL - the keyword of
this show that, rather than a classic hanging, will manifest itself as
translation of the artist’s everyday world, his atelier in Belgium, as big
and messy and crowded and chaotic as any building “under
construction”. As the process of making itself. Between objects, papers
and canvases, between ready-mades, comic-book drawings and savage
paintings, his – and your - building site is on the way.