"ONE TO NINE" VALERIAN GOALEC: Brussels

In arithmetic, the numerals from 1 to 9 are described as units; they are digits from which numbers derive. The title is therefore not so much a qualitative description of paintings and objects as an invitation to reflect on the inexhaustible potential of one device or the other, the infinite character of the possible propositions. Unity allows one to perceive and imagine multiplicity.

Peinture aléatoire N°23 is a series of paintings joining dots numbered from 1 to 9 on the canvas grid. While some of the lines are contained in segments, others move out of the surface, extending off of it. The grid is not quite limited to its representational surface, but extends to the space itself (the studio, the gallery, the world), as a materialisation of the planes and perimetres in which one may act.

The viewer is presented with the result of a pre-determined process. The unfinished exhaustion of the forms and of their variations is linked to the process-based nature of the work. The paintings are “random,” yet the implementation of specific construction tools and of an extremely precise production apparatus produces a randomness with an extremely determined form. This series appears as a study in variations subjected to strict constraints. The intention resides therefore in the implemented system.

Image production thus derives from the creation of the tool; the creation of a volume (a tool- object) allows the production of the paintings. The empty sculptures conversely show an image through the crystallising of a container without content. While the lines in Peinture aléatoire offer a spatial reflection, the sculptures in Vide provide a spatial representation.

One to Nine associates randomness and determination, arbitrariness and intention, image and object, fullness and emptiness, yet without opposing each aspect of the same piece against the other. Each object thus contains its own paradoxes; each piece simultaneously proposes its own limits and possibilities.