Double Honor - 2020
42 x 19 x 15 cm
Brons, acrylic paint
« Double Honor »
A driven artist with a healthy dose of self-perspective
Pieter Bauters is a passionate artist who always manages to put things into perspective. His art is a reflection of a society that’s obsessed with novelty and fixated on speed. In the exhibition “Ik dacht dat het maar een spel was” or “I thought it was just a game”, the artwork “Double Honor” strikingly reflects the way the mind of this versatile artist works.
Artistry as an attitude
Pieter experiences the world as an inextricable tangle of values, standards and opinions. He’s searching for the right balance, not by passing judgement, but also not by taking everything too seriously either. For Pieter Bauters, creating visual imagery is an attitude: an awareness as he questions his place in society. In his art, he tries to convey his vision of reality as a whole by rewriting parts of it. Pieter Bauters’ work is all about disassembling reality and rebuilding and reconstructing it in his own vision.
Not a block of wood you throw into the fireplace
At first glance, “Double Honor” looks like a piece of a split tree trunk, decorated with colored wooden dowels. However, it looks a bit too good to simply throw into the fire. This piece of wood doesn’t have to be burned to show its quality. Crackling firewood creates coziness for the family and gives us feelings of warmth, security and togetherness. Feelings that we all long for in our lives, in one way or another.
Wooden dowels referring to mortise and tenon joints
From childhood wood has always been an interesting and beloved material for Pieter Bauters. The brightly colored dowels on the sculpture refer to the age-old mortise and tenon joint in the joinery. Round, elongated wood particles form a strong, physical connection between different pieces of wood. For Pieter, these connections symbolize the different relationships that people have with one another. These relationships can be familial, emotional, friendly or professional. Hence the different colors. Once the imaginary blocks are anchored in each other, they make a strong whole: a piece of furniture, family, society, the world, and so on.
Double Honor misleads the viewer
This true-to-nature work of art misleads the viewer. The sculpture is not at all a wooden object of which only ashes remain after consumption. The statue is made of durable bronze. This way it stands the test of time and does not just exist by the grace of being destroyed. It is a carefully selected piece of art that symbolizes identity and security.
The Honor of double significance
The artist creates a field of tension in ‘Double Honor’. With the idea of “I thought it was just a game” that doesn’t escape his mind, Pieter Bauters puts double meaning to his bronze statue. On one hand we see the cleaved wood that gets thrown brutally into the fire, which refers to our need for security. On the other hand we see the colored drifts that represent social cohesion, the position we take towards each other and by extension, our need for identity.