Thomas Lerooy‘s bronze sculptures and drawings challenges and plays with the classical notion of the iconic. The references are bound to Western art, from ancient Roman as much as to that of the Renaissance, Classicism and Mannerism. However, even if Lerooy founds his artistic methods and subjects on the past, he is always concentrated on the present.
In his artistry, one can recognize an ancient-style nude, but pierced by glass bottles; a putti, but with a skull’s head, and the martyr story of St. Sebastian pierced by an arrow. By using the formal elements and materials associated with high art, the artist conceptually disturbs the viewers’ expectations by fusing beauty and the grotesque.
In Lerooy’s art life and death, diversity and unity, the iconic and the fragmentary are brought together, and his art is bound for reflection and meditation.
Lerooy’s most famous work is the monumental bronze figure “Not Enough Brains to Survive”. The sculpture shows a perfect sculpted body of a Greek statue, which has somehow missed its mark. In antiquity, Greek sculptors were particularly concerned with proportion, poise, and the idealized perfection of the human body.
Lerooy’s sculptures however, has much too big heads or far too small bodies, which creates an ironic reference to our expectations and art history’s great ideal of beauty and strive for perfection.
Images courtesy of Thomas Lerooy
Discover: www.thomaslerooy.com | www.brandstrup.no
