Pol BURY

BURY Pol (b. Haine-Saint-Pierre, Belgium, 1922- d. Paris, 2005)

Before becoming known as the sculptor of movement, slowness and randomness, Pol Bury was a painter closely related to the "surrealist" current and later to the "CoBRa" movement. Between 1949 and 1951, Bury explored a cold, structured style of painting reminiscent of geometric abstraction, also toying with space and time.
In 1953, Bury definitively abandoned easel painting. Soon after, his first mobile reliefs appeared in exhibition at the Apollo Gallery in Brussels (1954). A year later, Bury presented these pieces in Paris the exhibition was called "le Mouvement which featured works by Calder, Duchamp, Jacobsen, Soto, Tinguely and Vasarely. The exhibit became a foundational act of kinetic art.
Though the spectator created movement around the first "Plans Mobiles", Bury from then on used the electric motor to drive his "Multiplans".
Bury created objects upon which diverse forms (spheres, squares, cubes) explored the fascinating powers of slow motion. His oeuvre earned him the honor of representing Belgium in the Biennale of Venice.

During the mid-1960s, Bury began to use metal in place of wood, and it became his material of choice. The effect of the electromagnetic motor forces he employed, favored the playful appearance of light-reflecting mirrors. In 1969, Bury constructed his first “fontaine mobile” for the University of Iowa.

Beginning in the 1970s, his fountains (both interior and exterior) were powered by hydraulic energy. These fountains, including those at the Maeght Foundation (Saint-Paul, 1978), Solomon Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1980), and Place du Palais Royale (Paris, 1985) are constructed of long cylinders or spheres in perpetual motion.
From 1964 on, Bury continued to pursue his quest for movement, switching constantly between his three dimensional work and his graphic oeuvre. On paper, he has produced various photographs and postcards using the process he named "Cinétisation"; Bury also created "ramollissements", or deformed images, on sheets of metal. In 2001, he premiered His "Ramollissements virtuels", which feature morphed images of masterpieces of art history, created with the help of Photoshop. Between 2003 and 2004, Bury composed several streamlined reliefs that progress infinitely along imperceptible trajectories.

Yves Malrin