Damien Cabanes

(France) *1959 in Suresnes

Damien Cabanes, who lives and works in Paris, turned away from painting in the early 1990’s to devote himself almost exclusively to sculpture. He at first created painted human figures and abstract experimental forms in plaster and clay, before starting to explore light plastics as the material for his large-format works. In his stacks of identical geometric bodies Cabanes investigates the relationship of mass and space. Colour invariably plays a great part here, even in his three-dimensional works. His almost three-metre high work “Sagesse” (Wisdom), on display in the Schlosspark in “Blickachsen 9”, is a characteristic example of the Frenchman’s huge, colourful spiral bodies, which seem to twist themselves into their surrounding space. Cabanes here works with the spatial properties of colour, and demonstrates that colour can alter the volume effect of a sculpture. It can optically make a body larger or smaller, push it into the distance or bring it nearer, and highlight its constituent parts, or push them into the background – and can reinforce the spatial impression of movement. Standing out conspicuously in its natural surroundings, “Sagesse” opens to the observer a huge imaginative space for a play of association.