"Venet's GRIBS, which begin as automatic, imprecise scribbles recorded on paper with finite precision, are transformed in a manufacturing process that is, in the same but opposite way, precise in the manufacturing but guided by something inherent and inexplicable in the natural constraints of the material."
"Gribouillis": to doodle (a small mindless sketch)
"The GRIB sculptures act as living drawings. Two-dimentional drawings by Venet, quick, lose sketches, typically made on a glossy card, sometimes without his even looking, are then enlarged by computer to a plastic form, and are eventually transformed into giant, wall-mounting 3-dimentional steel structures. The inexplicable, frenetic movement of the artist's hand in the first stage of the process is akin to the surrealist concept of automatic writing and it is elevated as a meaningful gesture by their final, monumental scale. The 1.5-inch steel plates used by Venet are torch-cut, a technique that adds to the unpredictable nature of the artist's "scribbles,"—"gribouillis" in French—and gives these works a rougher character that is less elegant and accessible than their relief predecessors. The recent works are liberated from the control of his previous constructions. Where those accorded to precise mathematics, these give way to the inherent possibilities and proclivities of the material. Venet reflects, "my work at the factory is a game of natural constraints between my intentions and the material itself. Each orients the other and is oriented in its turn. By not changing its nature, I do not manipulate its appearance; that would involve creating artifices. In my sculpture, I am intent on keeping the energy of the atomic mass and its relationship to gravity, on respecting its singularity and its identity."
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