«
Au premier abord, Sean Henry semble se rattacher à la tradition américaine [de
la sculpture contemporaine] qui privilégie la recherche de la vraisemblance.
[…] ce que l'on retrouve chez Sean henry, c'est un idéalisme d'un autre type.
Il ne s'agit pas de se référer au corps idéal, comme le faisait la sculpture
grecque du Ve siècle avant J.-C., mais - oserait-on dire- de tenter
d'entrouvrir une brèche pour mieux appréhender l'âme humaine. Simples et
directes dans leur mode d'expression, ces œuvres nourrissent cependant des velléités
que l'on ne retrouve plus dans la sculpture contemporaine, ce qui nous les fait
percevoir comme dépassées.»
-
E.L. Smith, "L'ambiguïté de la sculpture de Sean Henry", Espace,
1999
Sean
Henry a été le récipiendaire du prix de la Villiers David Foundation
***
"Henry's
figures are immobile. It is as if they have absorbed the sense of the time the
artist dedicated to giving them life, as if they share an abstract time, a kind
of duration created between his work and their imminent existence with him. They
wait for him to finish producing them. And then they continue waiting. Henry's
decision to paint his sculptures with oil paint becomes the solution to a
problem that is both existential and artistic. The encounter of inspirations and
motivations, the infinity of cases which are multiplied, leading him to a result
that is complex and very simple at the same time. As if Lucian Freud's oil paint
were to be spread over solid and compact, square and massive forms. The delicate
shades of the oil on the body enable him to continue something that comes from
within, from inside the body. His male figures, as Henry points out, are not
those of menacing giants. The sculptures represent ordinary people, solid and
present in real volumes like Georges Segal's plasters, interested in the
everyday, minimal, banal acts of cultured persons caught in a gesture that has
no history and no significance. Henry's men and women do nothing. They have
inherited the austere and serious posture from Giacometti, as they wait
attentively for a possible future, whose history is part of a subsequent, as yet
untold, chapter. Donkey is the right size, the sculptor explains, to meet
your eyes, he must not seem real. Life size sculpture is too close to death. The
aura of myth always hovers around the sculpture. The enchanted circle
comprehends, between life and death, his existence".
-
Beatrice F. Buscaroli, Curator, Museo Civico, Bologna, Italy. Translated from
the Italian
