Sagesse 4

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.