Pierre ventilée

The ready-made stone and the sculptor fan

This installation starts with a fragment of rock, its curve naturally shaped over time by geological folds, collected by the artist during walks or carefully sourced from quarries. Its base is cut just right to be paired, neither too closely nor too distantly, with a fan that matches it in size, color and design. The visible result: a stone that seems to have been sculpted by the wind.

To form such a curvature, a stone requires geological time, a duration far beyond our human time scale. The fan has no perceptible effect on the rock. Its breeze merely grazes its surface. It may just as well remain forever switched off. To the stone’s immanence answers the silence of a symbolic tool that seems supposed to shape it. Like a frozen frame, this irrational object confronts us with stillness in a world constantly driven by haste. It invites us to pause and catch our breath. The stone belongs to a vast, immeasurable temporality whereas the fan operates in fleeting bursts. Their pairing forges a connection between the inert nature of the rock and the active potential of the fan. It shows the duality between the permanence of the stone and the ephemeral nature of technology.

The very first appearance of a Ventilated Stone took place during an exhibition by Daniel Dutrieux at Galerie Le Bateau Ivre in Redu in 1989. Since then, the artist has relentlessly continued to create new iterations as chance discoveries present themselves to him.