Didier Leemans

Didier Leemans

Location: Belgium

Drawing in volume or making a voluminous drawing.
For a number of years my exploration has focussed on the « Human Presence », a sort of evocation of the body and its spatial relationship imprinted in the memory. The study of anatomy has allowed me to analyse, decompose and construct a whole repertory of signs, a sort of synopsis of the body where the bodily archetype and its universality become detached from the representation of an identity.
Wood with its mutable materiality allows me a variety of possibilities for “writing”, by drawing with a chain saw, the trace of the tool remaining as a vibration in the material, like a scarification of the body. The torso thus becomes a breath by the emphasis of the belly, ribs and sternum which enclose the lungs.
I open the interior space of the tree, the trunk becomes a body, I amass various stages of a movement, suggesting the before and after in a to and fro between the internal anatomical structure and the exterior rough or smooth texture. A volumetric snapshot, a creation of tension, a suspension, as if, all of a sudden, everything is about to move.


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