Guido Geelen

Untitled (urinals) with its irregular growth of protrusions, looks most like an alarmingly large beetle, whose limbs and antennae have been deformed by some grave illness. Those who feast their eyes, however, will notice that the protrusions are made from castings of old-fashioned Dutch clay pipes and that the ‘body’ consists of two joined castings of a urinal. Geelen has not removed the bronze of the many runners (pouring channels for casting), as is normally done in bronze casting. It is typical of Geelen’s refinement that, by leaving the runners intact, he has actually done no more than to make the process of bronze casting visible. Here he applies a pre-eminently modernist principle, that of clarity. Just as a painting is no more than a flat surface with paint, a sculpture is merely a lump of bronze that has been molded. With this surprising work, Geelen has given birth to an anti-modernist-looking monster, by which he defies the strictness of modernism with its own arsenal of weapons.