P.I.: In your response to an earlier question, you explained that the peculiarity of your horned pieces lie in the physical clues all over the work and this questions “the relationship to the sculpture as a thing and the thing as conceptual other.” Is there a depth to this relationship?
V.P.: I certainly hope that there is a depth in this relationship. I am trying to touch some deep, hidden parts of a person’s being, a seriousness that matters. To “understand a sculpture as a thing that is a conceptual other”, means for me, that you have to engage in a profound way with the kind of language that I am proposing to you as an engagement in a physical way. Since the beginning of my adult life I have been deeply involved in existentialist writing and thinking. It forms a ground for my work in many ways. I try to investigate the idea of being here by avoiding definite propositions. I would like to link with a person’s own experience without wanting or needing to know what that is. I am not trying to give you answers or quick solutions. Unfortunately in today’s world people are trained to respond through what I am trying to avoid in my work. A consumers mind is often scared to open up to the unknown and the unpredictable, to something different. So, I think looking for depth is probably not in fashion. But that may change, too. I like to use the analogy of food when I describe this search for depth and “taste”: When you think of canteen food, you probably won’t remember it. It is shallow, because someone is trying to feed the masses. In order to do this, they have to take the spices out. Everybody eats it, but nobody thinks about it, or feels it anywhere deep down. When you add the spices, you have to become very specific and you will not reach the masses, but there will be a few people that really love it – or hate it. For them you have created a meal that they may never forget and it may change their eating habits forever.
P.I.: Are you still keeping busy? You had your latest exhibition not too long ago. Are there any future plans you want to share?
V.P.: I have an opening in early June as one of two artists contributing an artwork to a sculpture park in Italy: La Serpara, just North of Rome. The piece is a new work of this year: “Cavallo” – and leads into a new body of work that I am preparing for a solo show in October 2011 with the title “Tight Rein” at Studio 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I am participating in an important group exhibition: Sculpture Today: New Forces, New Forms, opening in September 2011 at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan USA. Also, there will be a new catalogue this year of my large scale works with the title “Physical Encounters”. A young art historian from Montreal, Andria Minicucci, will write the text for it. So I am pretty excited about a busy year.
P.I.: Thank you for your time and painstaking response to my questions Vanessa.
V.P.: Thank you very much for the opportunity Patrick.
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