From Jacques Jarrige's body of work "Waves"
Sculpture in hand hammered aluminum created by Jacques Jarrige in 2017 .
Jacques Jarrige has always explored the relationship between line and space, material and void to its very limit in his sculpture, furniture and jewelry.
In each medium a gestural, often hesitant line strives to embrace an elusive volume. The tension between minimal solid shapes and expansive open space is at the heart of his three-dimensional drawings.
Then there is the kinetic element: the line itself already embodies a searching, an almost trembling movement feeling its way into emptiness, unguided by any preliminary sketches. The sculpture transmits a sense of instability, as well as actual motion, inflecting a decisive physical presence with a gestural expressiveness
Jacques Jarrige has a curiosity about poor materials and their untapped potential. Hammering a relatively modest metal repeatedly has a functional purpose of annealing and shaping a material otherwise soft and malleable and then the hammered metal acquires a luminous presence. Now the surface carries a memory matrix of the energy spent on laboring it. The repetitive nature of the hammering engages the artist in a meditative, call-and-response-like dialogue with the metal. It is the presence of the artist’s gesture within that in turn allows for a meaningful dialogue between Waves and the viewer.
The sculptures Waves were first shown at the Queens Museum in July 2015