Document généré le 30 sept. 2021 18:57 Espace Sculpture Bill Vazan Exploring The Limits of Sculpture James D. Campbell Un certain Montréal sculpté (suite et fin) Montreal Sculpture: From a Certain Perspective (continuation and conclusion) Numéro 21, automne 1992 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/10109ac Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Le Centre de diffusion 3D ISSN 0821-9222 (imprimé) 1923-2551 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Campbell, J. D. (1992). Bill Vazan: Exploring The Limits of Sculpture. Espace Sculpture, (21), 42–47. Tous droits réservés © Le Centre de diffusion 3D, 1992 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ ^f- 'JMStO/J Exploring the Limits of Sculpture James D. Campbell ver the course of more than thirty years, oriented artist now working in Canada, his oeuvre has always revealed a highly sophisticated social Bill Vazan, Observed, 1990-1992. (Detail). OMontreal-based artist Bill Vazan has estab­ 15 engraved granites. 1,5 x 6 x 4,8 m. lished himself as an important practitioner of con­ and environmental conscience and has demon­ Installation in Agnes Etherington Gallery, ceptual, photographic and land-oriented art. Argu­ strated a deep understanding of the issues at stake Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. Photo : B. Vazan. ably the most important conceptual and land- in conceptual and land-oriented art. More impor- 42 ESPACE 21 automne / fall 1992 tantly, it has attempted to explore the limits of given stone (in his sculptures) or the skin of the Vazan's is a cosmogonie act. One sculpture. planet (in his earthworks). Going where no one has might suggest that each line the From works of international significance and gone before, he etches there expressive lines in artist routs in the surface of the rock scope in the late 1960s, such as the global linkup millenia-old matter; lines which project us beyond is a contemporary recital of the cos­ projects Worldline and Contacts, through his con­ the mundane limits of the present tense, back into mogonie myth. In effect, each time ceptual photographic projects and earthworks, and the plenitude of primordial time. In so doing, he that he willfully circumscribes the culminating in his most recent sculptural (routed effectively lets free an inhering spirit from the stone mute stone with the immanent rock) and drawing works, Vazan's oeuvre as a that really functions as an archetype — for him and expressiveness of his line — some­ whole has always represented a conscientious for us, his viewers. times coming back to where he attempt to change the condition of being here and In the snaking lines graven in this living rock are started, full circle, as it were — that to push forwards the frontiers of what sculpture is. haunting images, primal petroglyphs and atavistic stone begins to speak, in a sense Vazan addresses the panglobic factuality of cul­ sigils which bespeak a time when mark-making was taking the artist and his viewers ture in a human-centred universe and, most impor­ magical by virtue of being invested with the power right back to the origin of the tantly, he acts out of a profound sense of respect of anticipation; with sympathetic magic, and with world. for the natural environment. He has used rocks in primordial wonder. Each stone that Bill Vazan exe- his conceptual sculpture over a period of many years (such as Rock Alignments & Pilings (1963) and the Balance series (1971-74). His more recent recourse to a routing technique transforms them into sculptures per se with real symbolic value. One should stress at the outset that Vazan started his career as a painter but it was not long before he found it necessary to reach beyond what became for him the claustrophobic limits of the painting plane into the world of our concrete lived- experiences. Painting was simply too cloistered an endeavour; he wanted to realise possibilities that it could neither realise nor contain. He wanted to connect with our actual and possible experiences in what has been called the 'life-world' — which is nothing more or less than the world in which we already live. Virtually from the outset of his concern for the 'life-world,' Vazan realised the boundlessness of its horizon: the awesome potentiality not just of the body and its kinesthesis but also the role of myth, magic and the imaginai for the making of art. Vazan began executing his mature and histori­ cally important works in the late 1960s. While an analysis of the full scope of his endeavour obvi­ ously lies outside the parameters of the present essay, it is worth noting that his global linkup pro­ jects such as Worldline still represent a genuinely humanistic paradigm of cross-cultural communica­ tion and discourse. In one of the more insightful texts written to this date on Vazan's work, Paul Heyer, an anthropolo­ gist, characterized Vazan as a contemporary "cos- mographer". Heyer defined cosmography as a "mixture of science, art and philosophy that deals with the whole order of nature" and went on to suggest that Vazan is "concerned with a human centered universe."' This is still correct. All of Vazan's efforts as a creative artist have been, in effect, to educate his viewers concerning the potentiality — and, of course, the potential vulner­ ability — of the natural world now so much at risk; to reinstitute a long lost compact between ordinary man and the cosmic order he inhabits. This has f::V '- •.-'••• had the effect of making us more sensitive to the natural phenomena and unseen forces that affect In routing the rock; in articulating it; in subordi­ every facet of our daily lives. nating it to his own intentions but working with, Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1992. rather than against, its grain; in guiding it towards Engraved granite. H. : 2,59 m. II. the fullness of an archaic expression still resonant Installation: Tamworth, Ontario. Photo : B. Vazan. Bill Vazan's cosmogony is envisioned anew each today — in other words, in lending it a voice and a and every time he penetrates the epidermis of a form adequate to express wholly human meanings, ESPACE 21 aulomne / fall 1992 43 eûtes makes us a living witness to channel its spirit without forsaking its natural pres­ pretty much intact. Because our own imaginative the cosmogony. One could con­ ence. Vazan successfully unleashes a force that propensities are brought into play, the images that strue the stones as maquettes for resides in latency in the living substrate of rock. The enliven these objects have no finitude, only an our globe, and the routing its gir­ rocks he uses bring a history with them to his endea­ unending depth. dling. Vazan's act is a reactualisa­ vour; they carry unutterable millenia of attrition, tion of that mythical moment when process and change. Indeed, their very existence as III. the archetype was revealed for the a material to be used is itself, as Mircea Eliade avers, Bill Vazan has an abiding understanding of and first time2. a hierophany: incompressible, invulnerable, it is that respect for the imaginai and a desire to share that In terms of Vazan's rocks and which man is not.4 understanding with the observer. He acts as our drawings, we can argue that a cos­ Vazan's stones become something more than guide into a primordial world rife with atavisms mogony is reproduced in each and stones, more even than aesthetic objects. They have and archetypes, and makes these immediately every one of his constructions. A acquired an atavistic voice. Vazan impregnates his accessible to us. "new era" begins, in effect, with rocks with a quality of primeval life through working Vazan as a creative artist has learned how to the routing of each rock. Each rock with, rather than against, their innate properties and help his viewers develop a sensitivity towards the represents an absolute beginning. traits, whether pink granite, limestone or quartz. The imaginai and to enter into a compact with it. He We can also argue that it is this symbolic shape or phenomenal resonance of a is able to teach and guide us into a relation with continual creation that renders him given genus of rock becomes a starting point, the imaginai because it is a terrain he knows inti­ contemporary with the mythical reflecting the depth of Vazan's own affinity for and mately. He knows the topography and the sign­ moment of the beginning of the familiarity with the material. posts. He is conversant with the access roads and world and that his creativity is a Such a resonance is never sacrificed by the artist the border-crossings. He clarifies the imaginai by very real attempt to return to that as he works the rock; rather it dictates the parame­ using images that remind us of those that emerge singular moment — the singularity ters of his working methodology. His respect for the from the surface of a waking dream: images, pic- of being — in order that he might phenomenality of the rock — and the phenome­ tographs and symbols that always point beyond continually regenerate himself as a nology of making — always enjoys primacy.