Luigi Carluccio, “Jean Ipoustéguy”

Here is an artist who takes us by storm, yet he himself is difficult to grasp. For while it is true that we immediately perceive the grandeur of his intentions and the strength with which he releases a formal presence of the absolute, he offers us few stylistic references capable of embracing the continuity of his approach in a logical sequence.

Ipoustéguy almost always begins with an elemental observation. Let us say, rather, that he lingers on the initial, primal observation of a form—expressing a constant force that does not consume all its potential at once. This constancy sometimes becomes obsessive, for it satisfies all his requirements for action and knowledge. He works like a compact block, rich in suggestion, whose definitions—and consequently “identifications”—are relegated to the margins. It is as if he wishes to respect the vital core, whose subtle pulsations, contractions, fissures, pits, abysses, blisters, and eruptions we perceive even through the iron cage of inorganic matter.

Ipoustéguy’s “Heads” are the clearest evidence of his way of dwelling on the simple existence of a form, or the elemental presence of the absolute. What the artist defines as “tactile” is a further indication of the primordial conditions of his work. This is not merely a matter of taking possession of an optical reality, but rather a true dialectical penetration of the object—a living, sensitive adhesion to the inert form. The form comes alive through a multiplicity of physical echoes, references, and reciprocal sensory modifications, as well as the implications these modifications suggest regarding the nature and scope of the cognitive data.

If the artist devotes himself to the realization of a larger design, he does so through successive elemental observations in a kind of tight interplay. Sometimes he goes as far as the temerity of disconcerting risks—aggregations of elements, interlockings, and blocks. That is to say, it is once again a harsh and peremptory interplay of quantities, weights, and masses, presenting in a dilated dimension the same abysses, the same blisters, the same cracks and eruptions. In this case, they are not mere morphological indications, but routes of penetration—explosive itineraries into the interior of the work, to its primordial core, to the incandescent field of the artist’s “struggle with the angel.”

This is a decisive moment that must be overcome: it is a core for which the usual notions of space and time—and, since it must necessarily manifest itself in figures, the notions of number and perspective—have only a relative meaning. They are adapted to express a fury that concerns both matter and psyche, a will to exist that pushes back the limits, modifying the relations between being and non-being. It is a will that welcomes Hamlet’s doubt as a third, authentic, and effective hypothesis of the truth.

Alexander’s third arm in front of Ecbatane, as well as the third leg of L’Homme, the discordances of Rémoulus, and the inconsistencies of L’Homme passant la porte are the active residue of this doubt. They are the fulfillment of a concrete presence within, above, and through the concrete image of a hypothesis that is not merely fantastic in nature. The most obvious problem in Ipoustéguy’s work is not so much justifying a sum of renunciations to satisfy a desire for stylization; rather, it is justifying his inability to renounce, fueled by the hope of achieving style in the fullness of his intentions while preserving the artist’s energy, rigor, and availability.

Alexandre devant Ecbatane and Femme au bain are opposing poles—in a sense polemical—that coexist within Ipoustéguy’s field of activity. They are two images that obliterate Braque and Rodin, rigor and sensual passion, while transcending the usual rules of pure visuality, helping to establish Ipoustéguy’s work in a zone that, while immense, neither consumes nor degrades its vital concentration. Alexandre is the “archaeological” species; Femme is the “erotic” species of the same tendency to be integral objects of life within life, real objects within reality.

In Alexandre (seen at the SAI headquarters in Turin, Corso Galileo Galilei), the figure may detach from the wall of memory’s tomb, or enter it to measure eternity. It is a figure made of earthen blocks—a set of splinters and armor from which fleshy limbs emerge, indicating persistent aggression, the will to possess, the grasp, the pleasure, and also the caress as temptation. It is part of the man compressed by power—an inalienable part.

Ecbatane, the city, is coiled before Alexander—closed in on itself like a spider, or a crab feigning death when surprised by a suspicious gesture; or like a diurnal flower upon which shadow unexpectedly descends. Perhaps Alexandre devant Ecbatane is a poem about the silence of the hunt, the immobility of the stalk, the attraction of horror, the panic-stricken suspension at the threshold of cruelty. Perhaps it also illustrates the slow pleasure, the unspeakable voluptuousness uniting the extremes of violence: executioner and victim. Ecbatane may also be the image of a woman lurking to hide her beauty and provocations, aware that mere existence constitutes a challenge.

In contrast to the ambiguous, intense calm of Ecbatane, Femme au bain is a trap sprung into motion. We hear the hinge snap. Splinters and armor peel away at invisible ganglia, tearing away shreds of mask that are actually shreds of flesh. It is a cruel flaying that cannot end without responding to the artist’s desire to reach the deepest nudity of a nude. Its disrupted, shattered structure—unclothed and defenseless to appear at once tragic, grotesque, and erotic—reveals the visceral nature of Ipoustéguy’s motivations: a drive and determination unrivaled in sculpture today, to make visible, plastically recognizable, the tangled logic of our adherence to life’s events and phenomena.