THE BURGHERS OF Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais) is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin.
When Torsten Jurell started his work with his group, he found some
associations with The Burghers of Calais. Jurell happens to make six
sculptures as the result of how many logs he had. Rodin made six
sculptures. Jurell was also surrounded by his figures, just like
Rodin’s burghers are moving round in a circle.
From the very beginning, Jurell called his sculptures “The Girls of Calais” as a nickname.
Finely, the name became the real name - The Girls Of Calais...
But the associations with Rodin’s Burghers of Calais are not a small joke;
One of the girls is carrying a reliquary; some kind of shrine, or it
could be an “image band” where a victim from our time is stan-ding in a
well-known silhouette - The Prisoner in Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
THE GIRLS OF CALAIS consists of a group of girls and a megaphone tower.
Another girl is carrying a fish, one is carrying a votive shrine, one
is carrying a silhouette, and one is hiding her face, her intentions
are hidden. The fifth - The Trapeze Dancer is stretching her hands up
to the eternity just the way The Girls of Calais sometimes do...
What about the tower? It is given a name: “Information”…
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Read about "The Burghers of Calais" - a sculpture by August Rodin
To Sculptures 2007... |
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“Who’s this woman?”
“I take a piece of wood, a square block – all basically the same.
Make a summary drawing, a face.
Put the nose in the corner or in the middlex”
“Won’t you chop away the drawing, then?”
“Sure! It’ll be woodchips on the floor and I’ll have to draw a new onex”
“But it’ll only disappear again!”
“Now is when it gets interesting!
Each time I redraw the face, the eyes move inwards from the original
surface. My hewing has adjusted itself to the wood piece’s
singularities. Look here – the direction of the fibres have affected
the direction of the nose and the forehead is more personal.
From what seemed to be just any piece of wood rises a unique person.
Finally we, she and I, make eye contact – like a flirtation!
My knees go all weak.
I want to bring out this magic again and again!
That why – these ladies in that moment, isn’t everyone the same?
Don’t you think so, Eva?”
Text to the catalogue of the show at M'ARS Gallery of Contemporary Art 2006
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