Vanitas. Montage by Jean Pierre Laurent. Brussels, ca.1970.

Vanitas. Montage by Jean Pierre Laurent. Brussels, ca.1970.
"À la recherche de la vérité".
Human skull and geometric elements in wood.
Measurements: 30 x 20 x 17 cm.

This suggestive composition is inscribed in the tradition of the vanitas, a genre of deep symbolic charge developed since the Baroque, here reinterpreted in a contemporary key.

The human skull, the central element of the memento mori, appears open and "occupied" by a set of geometric shapes -spheres, prisms and polyhedrons- that introduce an intellectualized reading of the motif: reason, science or the search for knowledge literally emerge from inside the human mind.

The contrast between the organic and the rational, between the fragility of life and the permanence of ideas, articulates a visual discourse of great conceptual force.