Steinland

August 12, 2009
Jean-Pierre Uhlen
1990
Steel, granite, resin and minium color, height: 2.9m, on the ground 6 x 5m
Deposit of the Region Collection of Contemporary Art (Frac Limousin) in 1990
Born in Mulhouse in France in 1959, Jean-Pierre Uhlen lives and works in Limoges.
If the artist is deeply interested in conceptual art, he is no less concerned with the relations that join architecture and sculpture. The word also occupies a great deal of his works, this being the way that he introduces the idea of representation in his sculpture.
Jean-Pierre Uhlen produced Steinland in a gap in the trees on the edge of the lake. The work is presented as a view-point but also as a signal, open both to the lake and to the opposite bank of the Island. It is therefore like a passage, a communication established between the Island and the outside. The vibrant color of the minium-tinted portico and plateau reinforces the signaling aspect of the work.
Steinland provides a fictional state of interior architecture transposed to open air. On the ground, blocks of granite assure the horizontality of the six-meter steel frame delimiting the volume of the work. The portico and plateau, whose perspective offers no practical finality, fit inside this frame on the ground.
This monumental sculpture is also presented as a picture, an ambiguous reference ever present in Jean-Pierre Uhlen’s sculptural work. The orange portico thus plays the role of a frame containing the work. The formal geometry of the sculpture recalls the rigorous conifer plantations all around and on the hill on the other side of the lake. The title of the work, Steinland (land) and the mineral element (stein).