Although Pieter Vermeersch has been experimenting with work on marble since 2015, it is mainly in recent years that his use of the stone has come to the foreground. His solo exhibition at Museum M (Leuven, 2019) already featured works on which the artist had applied loose, bold strips of paint or covered surfaces in perfectly executed dégradé technique. In an interview with Veerle Devos (Damn, March 2017), he said the following:
‘Stone is very primary. If you break open a boulder from the river, you can see millions of years fixed in its veins. By mining, cutting, and polishing […] we make nature more visible. The passing of time becomes palpable! And we get a glimpse of something that was not previously visible. The history of stone has an almost cosmic dimension, which I want to reactivate in my work. Marble is stone that is metamorphosed under the influence of temperature, pressure, or hydrothermal fluids; it is often millions of years old and contains fossils. Such a piece of marble is like crystallized time and space.’
In this second edition of the Untitled series produced by Pieter Vermeersch for Ludion, he uses a light blue marble slab from Bahia, Brazil, screen-printed with a blue ink that slips towards white. The grid points are spaced to the extent of creating a quasi pointillist geometry that cuts through the timeless marble. Matter becomes image.
Screenprint on marble stone (framed)
Macaubas marble stone (Bahia, Brazil): 16.5 x 15 cm (6½ x 5.90 in)
Size frame: 84 x 62 cm (33 x 24½ in)
Printed by Bert Depuydt, Afreux, Antwerp
Edition of 12 + 3 AP
Published in September 2021