Text from The Lab 40 Exhibitions 06 - 08 edited by Gemma Tipton
When an artist elects to use found objects in their work, how much of the histories of those objects find their way into the work? Does a seemingly abstract sculptural form, created from hundreds of bookies' biros become infused with the resonances of gambling, faith, hope, and loss? Does collecting and collating these distill the resonances? Or does their migration from useful, useable objects to art object translate their meaning also?
De Buitléar is interested in these questions, and also in the arbitrary nature of the objects' discovery and re-presentation. Writing about the work, Peter Richards quotes Victor Burgin to point out “the arbitrariness of concepts of art... has a positive social function.” Art's ability to play with the fixties of identity and history, and the meanings acquired through purpose and usage is the liberating thing here. Meanwhile, the artist's own miniature origami forests of trees, or villages of paper that arise from red plastic crates seem to suggest a hopeful note of useful fantasy too.
Despite the potential for the obsessional in his work (hundreds, thousands of objects gathered and laid out), there is a fluidity to the constructions and arrangements that makes space for beauty in these fascinating works.