ARABIC SCULPTURE GROUP

Portrait of a sculptor

For artists fascinated of drapery and interested in clothing sculptures, the traditional Arabic clothing is of paramount interest. Therefore, Galschiot has made several copper sculptures expressing the genuine elegance and fluffy lightness of the Arabic clothing tradition. Most sculptures consist only of the clothing, detached from its human content. They match well the Islamic culture that according to the Koran bans sculpturing of human and animal faces.

In 1991 Galschiot conceived a project of a cavalcade of Arabic clothing. The proposal was negotiated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, but the project was temporarily suspended because of the Golf War, in the wake of which extremist Islamic groups have been invigorated. Such groups oppose this sort of sculpture. An attempt will be made to realize the project privately in the Arabian Peninsula.

Teshahud. Copper, 120 x 60 cm

THE OCTOPUS ROBE

The sculpture is created on the Octopus Robe, designed by one of the world’s most renowned Haute Couture designers, Danish Erik Mortensen (Balmain). As early as 1989 Mortensen and Galschiot agreed on a co-operation of transforming the art of Haute Couture into sculptural art. However, the idea did not take concrete form until 1998, when the School for Fashion and Design of Odense requested the two artists to create a sculpture for the new buildings of the school.

Just before his death in 1998, Erik Mortensen designated his creation the ‘Octopus Robe’ as model for the sculpture that was set up in front of the School in September 1999.

Danish art critic Erik Meistrup describes the sculpture this way:

The deep understanding and interpretation of the relations between the body, the form of costume, the play of draping of the costume, combined with the gracious movement of the person – that’s the very merging point between Jens Galschiot and Erik Mortensen, the manifestation of which is a frozen flash of lingering grace emanating its radiance into the open, where the sculpture is constantly fluctuating with the alteration of light and weather.