Sebastien Pauwels

Although Sebastien Pauwels produces individual sculptures, it is also true that all his pieces belong to a one big family; and it is so not only because he is the sole author but because the genesis of each piece very often comes from leftover materials of previous works. This distinctive circular approach to his practice creates a sense of cohesion and continuity that runs through all his oeuvre. Made out primarily of cardboard, fibreglass and coats of paint, Pauwels’ sculptures usually trick the eye when it comes to the perception of volume, shape and weight. The seemingly flat nature of his sculptures is soon replaced by a three-dimensionality that builds upon notions of positive and negative space. His sculptures reveal themselves as complex entities with whom we develop a rather deep and engaging bodily experience —an elaborated intertwining of matter and void, light and shade result in a powerful visual vocabulary on its own that also playfully draws from the Ancient to the late Modern abstract tradition.