Interlocking Dolmen
‘Impersonal parts that became a whole, like beads that make a necklace. It is synergy (…) that makes a whole more than its parts’ - Isamu Noguchi.
Interlocking Dolmen emerged from my desire to cultivate a broader spatial understanding of my sculptural practice. The combination of three monumental white marble pieces through an irregular interlocking system resulted in, to paraphrase Isamu Noguchi, a whole more than the sum of its parts. What I have achieved with this new body of work is a more synergetic approach to constructive and landscape sculpture through a form that references prehistoric architecture and bridges past and present timescales.
The practice of combining different elements provokes the question of how everything that exists - enmeshed in a reciprocal relation - contributes to this collective synergy. But how does synergy work?
What I have come to understand through the production of this work is that isolated items of no particular import can be arranged in unexpected ways, making them function as part of a more or less balanced ensemble. There are certain spatial rules to be observed for this to happen, which I have explored by creating a minimal counter-supporting structure. The result is a tripod of interlocking elements in a scale and material that lends a particular quality to the whole.
The essence of a distant past is evoked through its name and form, but Interlocking Dolmen also speaks of the present in which it is situated and how it was formed. Engineered using 3D-modelling software and alternating between abstract and manual interventions executed with the aid of modern technology, it is the result of a mixture of digital and analog thinking and refined through the process of making.
It is a sculpture linked to old ways of being human in front of nature, a past long since forgotten that took the form of monuments like dolmens, stone-circles and standing stones. In the presence of these prehistoric constructions, I see a primal human need to transform nature, a wilful act of segregation from it, a statement of our human capabilities and burgeoning intelligence. These dolmens remind us that our ancestors were once here, captivated by their existence, and maybe even contemplating their own synergy with the cosmos.
