ART CITIES:Brussels-Edgar Sarin

Edgar Sarin caught the eye of the public and art professionals right from the start thanks to his “Lifetime Concessions”, sealed artworks that their owner is forbidden to open whilst the artist is still alive. His work bears witness to a search for political and environmental harmony; his use of materials, ideas and presentation is accurate and to the point.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Michel Rein Gallery Archive

Edgar Sarin defends an approach that favors learning about the world and a reasoned form of creativity, one in which he develops a precise and profuse body of work across various disciplines and with different materials. His work conveys such notions as instinct, balance and accidents, to which he refers as a “necessary justice”. Each of his exhibitions is like a sophisticated clockwork mechanism that he fine-tunes in order to create an intimate and opulent experience for the spectator. Edgar Sarin’s solo exhibition “New Works” shows works carved in oak, dipped in olive oil, and some tossed in the fire, scattered around the room among photographs of dusty shades. Edgar Sarin creates installations which associate language and music with both the simplest of found objects and the most precious of metals, like: gold, brass, wood, stone, wax, concrete, sun-dried flowers, clay, air and water.  The work demands a lot from the onlooker, who must go along with the artist in the understanding of the work; so we can observe the shift from a posture of contemplation towards a movement of creation. As problematic entities and systems of constraints, the works are always conceived by the artist as a point of departure. They are objects which must be tamed and they are at the same time bearers of a residual energy, and a history that is peculiar to them and which cannot be limited to the way in which they are seen by the artist. In his “New Works”, Sarin provides an intimate and millenary work, which guides us through over-lap and experience toward the conscience of the instant before. By his step in the exhibition space, the visitor draws its extent. Above all, the missing parts of his works yell their symphonic presence in this era of fundamental disorientation.

Info: Michel Rein Brussels, Washingtonstraat 51A, Brussels, Duration: 7/3-13/4/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://michelrein.com