- Artist:
- Jakober, Ben & Vu, Yannick
- Date:
- 1994
- Technique:
- Cast aluminium and neon
- Dimensions:
- 320 x 450 x 200 cm
- Origin:
- Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma, donated by the artists
- Registration number:
- 366
This large-format piece created by Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu was first displayed in May of 1994, for their exhibition “Chthonian and Apollonian” in Galeria Pelaires in Palma, one of the first of their joint career.
Ritual starts out with a creative process based on research into new materials, in this case neon, with other more industrial or frequent ones, such as melted aluminium, to lend shape to pieces based on everyday elements which have a spiritual significance. The formal composition, expressed in diverse three-dimensional works on paper produced between 1992 and 1995, is articulated around four needles – everyday objects altered in their dimensions – the eyes of which are threaded with a yarn of yellow neon as a symbol of the fleeting union of the masculine and feminine strengths, alluding to fertility. A simultaneously contrasting and complementary duality which leads us to make a reflection of a metaphorical nature connected to Greek mythology, the convergence of earth and heaven, the mundane and the unique, the Chthonian and the Apollonian, the physical and the intellectual.
S.H.
After a remarkable career in banking, Ben Jakober focussed on artistic creation after 1968, when he settled on Mallorca –as a result of his friendship with the artist Domenico Gnoli –and completed his first works linked to Land Art, diverting into sculpture subsequently. Yannick Vu had a connection to art from her childhood years through her father, an artist, and began her career in Paris in 1962, centred on the pictorial medium, work she later complemented with sculpting. In the late ‘sixties she and the artist Domenico Gnoli moved together to Mallorca, where she has lived ever since. Since 1986, the creative work of Jakober and Vu has developed jointly, work they have continued to produce in conjunction with their heritage conservation activity, as collectors, via the Fundación Jakober-Vu since 1993, and through the Museu Sa Bassa Blanca since 2001, the year it opened to the public.
S.H.