Modelled after the plinth of Rodin’s Fallen Caryatid Carrying an Urn this plaster pedestal, along with the mould that wasused to cast it, rest on yet another lower and wider woodenplatform. This platform precisely borrows the material traitsand dimensions of a display originally devised by Rodin himself,and subsequently replicated in the plaster gallery of the RodinMuseum in Meudon. Thus one could say that Vermeiren’s is areplica of a replica, even though that word seems beside thepoint for a sculptor who considers recollection as his primarymaterial.

For Vermeiren, sculptures are tangible ideas; they are embodied recollections that allow for the past and the present to beimbricated like a positive in a negative. Throughout his work,sculptures always refer to other sculptures, both his own, andthose of his predecessors. Historically, Rodin was the firstsculptor to model his own bases for his figures–a developmentthat prefigured the work of Brancusi who considered the plinthas an inherent part of his sculptures. Perhaps their sharedenthusiasm for photography and its merging of space onto asingle plane is also characteristic of their concern for what itmeans to put something on display–a concern that Vermeirenunderstands as he works to transcend it.

Rodin’s approach to form in his figures was once described by Leo Steinberg as ‘a viscous flow that melts and reconstitutesitself before our eyes.’ Likewise, the three elements stackedand combined with a perplexing kind of simplicity inVermeiren’s monumental sculpture suggest movement. Thismovement evidently occurs through our physical presence aswe move around the work, but also through the interplay ofsupport structures conceived by the artist. Deprived of theirtraditional function, these amalgamated display systems haveus confound subject and object. In the midst of this confusion,the caryatid emerges as a freestanding figure–weightlessand almost unrecognisable, but undeniably present.

Didier Vermeiren (b. 1951, Brussels, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels. Recent exhibitions include Construction dedistance, FRAC Bretagne, France (2017); Rodin, l’Exposition ducentenaire, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2017) ; Etude pour leMonument à Philippe Pot (1996-2012), Saint Philibert Church,Dijon, France (2013) ; Sculptures, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens,Deurle, Belgium (2012) ; S_olides géométrique – Photoreliefs– Vues d’atelier_, Bourdelle Museum, Paris, France (2005) ;Collection de Solides, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, TheNetherlands (2003).