Pierre Lauwers
Barna
2000-2023
Fifteen digital prints, offset printed poster, customized mouse-trap and ping-pong ball in a box
Box: 21.5 x 17.5 x 5.5 cm / Photographs: 20.6 x 16.6 cm
Poster: 50 x 62 cm/ Trap with ball: circa 10 x 5 x 6.5 cm
Edition of thirty copies signed and numbered by the artist
Barna is the title of an expanding work by Pierre Lauwers. It started in 2000 on the occasion of an exhibition in Leipzig, where the artist presented a large number of customized mouse traps, each one fitted with a little base holding a ping-pong ball. These were grouped together in a large open case, waiting for involuntary vibrations or the action of a visitor to be triggered. The projected ball of a single trap would then activate the other traps in succession. The work offered a sort of absurd representation of the “chain reaction” in physics. A few years later, the little device became the subject of photographs taken with a stroboscopic light, with the aim of capturing the moment of the triggering. In this series, the search for a visual decomposition of movement (as practiced by the pioneering Muybridge) is combined with dramatic, almost theatrical effects. The ping-pong ball resembles a star that is subject to astronomical observations. Finally, after having served as a sculptural, performative, and photographic subject, the mouse trap has been recently considered in and of itself, as an isolated object, graphically analyzed through a 3D modeling program. Through these successive steps, enclosed here in a single edition like a toolbox, the artist playfully unfolds various aspects of scientific imagery and reveals its aesthetical potential.
Pierre Lauwers’s exhibition took place at Keijiban from January 15 to February 14, 2024.