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Wood sculptures
Photography: Dominique Smolders

 

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Shadow Figures
For Michel Smolders

To emerge from shadow or to fade into it,
a dance of eyes seizes the upstanding tree.
The carving has taken the place of the bark;
the nakedness of the wood reveals its veins,
its secrets, its contours, so many thwarted impulses.
The slip glaze casts a veil and plays with existence.
The search resumes
and the dance of eyes sets off again toward other incidences,
ascending the forms to reach at the summit
the enigma of a face.

On the frontons of old churches
figures sink into and emerge from view,
governed by light, abstracted from the real,
and yet so present that the welcome always animates them.

Philippe Jones